Not All Chains are Forged of Iron (let me go - don't let me go)
by Fox in the Stars
Summary: A search for an ancient relic leads Yona and her friends to Green Dragon Village. Jae-ha refuses to go with them — it's enough for him to have broken his chains and moved on — but ghosts from the past have other ideas, and they will force Yona to confront the chains binding her own heart. (Yuletide 2016, for mllelaurel)
1. The Seal

It was midday in Fire Tribe country as Yona, Hak, and the dragon warriors waited for Yoon to get back from checking on the villages that had once been their "bandit" territory. The campfire that had been so comforting in the frigid night now melted the very air around it into oily ripples, and no one ventured near it except Zeno, who occasionally sighed as if to say "nothing for it" and went to stir the stew he was making from a hare Yona had shot and a collection of roots and twigs. It smelled a lot better than it looked, although…

"Should we really be letting you forage?" Hak wondered. "I mean, just because something won't kill _you_ …"

"No worries, Zeno can tell," he announced, flashing his sunny, snaggletoothed smile. "If my body neutralizes poison I can feel it. Other things too, like if I was supposed to get drunk or start seeing things, I just kind of feel it not happen."

"Yours is the most tragic power, isn't it?" Jae-ha sighed, lounging on a pack of bedrolls. "That certainly takes the fun out of things." Hak and Kija gave him disapproving looks, which he noted with a lift of his brows before shrugging them off. "What can I say? I believe in drinking deep from the cup of life."

"A few other cups, too. You need to check what's in those," Hak said, a pointed reminder of the time Jae-ha had drunk wine laced with the drug nadai.

"I bring back valuable intelligence and these are the thanks I get…"

"Come again, Droopy Eyes? One of those words sounded like 'intelligence,' but I know that can't be right."

Yona left them to their banter and braved the heat to sample the stew broth. "Mm. The roots are a little bitter, but there's something like a spice that sets it off."

"Doesn't it? Zeno's glad the Miss likes it." He really did know what he was doing when he didn't manage to weasel out of cooking.

Jae-ha still wasn't off the hook, and now it was Kija's turn: "Think of others before you do things like that! You drove us all to distraction worrying about you!"

"I feel so loved," he replied, in an affected deadpan.

"This isn't a joke!"

Zeno leaned closer to Yona. "Say, do you think they're pushing Green Dragon a little far?"

She looked at the others. Jae-ha had taken Hak's needling with good humor bordering on masochistic relish, but now… His posture could still be called "lounging" and his expression a "smile," but he had crossed his arms and folded subtly inward — like a flower in the evening, Yona thought, if a man would let you say that about him. "Hmm, maybe."

Shin-ah had been dipping his finger into one of the waterskins and feeding Ao by drops while he watched for Yoon. Now, he didn't say anything, but he had gotten so absorbed in watching the argument that he only belatedly looked back over his shoulder. "Ah, Yoon is back." Through the sparse scrub vegetation, the others could already see him, too.

"Mother comes to the rescue!" Zeno breathed.

Yona ran out to meet Yoon, asking about how he'd found things in general and various villagers in particular. There had been some accidents, yes, and some people's old illnesses had gotten worse, but overall things were going well — better now than before, with more support from the tribe capital.

"I did hear something scary, though," Yoon said as they arrived at the camp and sat down with the others.

"Something scary?" Yona leaned closer.

"After Kan Soo-jin was defeated, apparently some of his soldiers still believed all of that, about being the true descendants of the Red Dragon King. Some of them got away, and now they're a band of rebels."

"Bandits, in other words," Hak opined. "Self-righteous bandits — the worst kind."

"Should _we_ really be the ones to complain about that?" Jae-ha wondered.

"Did they attack the villages?" Yona asked, anxious.

Yoon nodded. "Tae-jun's people got there before anyone was hurt, and then his brother's soldiers went through after them, but here's the scary part: before they were run off, they were asking about Green Dragon Village."

Silence fell, broken only by the bubbling stewpot. The others looked at Jae-ha. His fingers twitched where they rested on his crossed arms, but other than that, he didn't move or speak. Ao scampered over to him and up onto his sleeve.

"So it's like what the people were afraid of in the other dragon villages," Yona worried. "They're after a dragon's power."

Shin-ah curled up a little and made a soft sound.

"But word about us has been spreading," Kija said. "Surely by now they should know that the green dragon is somewhere else."

"It might not be that," Yoon said. "Heuk-chi didn't think so, anyway. He said that Fire Tribe nobles have an epic song about the Red Dragon King, and toward the end it talks about gifts he gave the four dragon warriors.

"Supposedly he gave the white dragon a necklace of beads and magatama jewels —"

"We still have that in the village. I get to wear it once a year at the Ancestors' Festival," Kija said, a bit gushingly.

"— He gave the blue dragon a silver ring —"

Shin-ah shook his head, but no one had really expected him to know.

"Zeno remembers that. The first blue dragon was really proud of it," Zeno offered. He made himself remember Abi showing the ring off when he had first received it, not just clasping it for comfort beside his king's tomb.

"— And supposedly," Yoon concluded, "he gave the green dragon his jade seal."

A collective "Ohhh" rose from the group.

"That would do it," Hak said. "A bunch of rebels who think they speak for the Red Dragon King would definitely want that. In the wrong hands, it could cause some trouble."

"The song seems pretty accurate, but would he really give something like that away?" Yoon asked, looking at Jae-ha and Zeno in turn.

"I never saw any such thing," Jae-ha said flatly.

Zeno rubbed his boyish chin but shook his head slowly, not in denial, rather admitting that the deep well of his memory had come up dry.

"He must really have trusted the green dragon, if it was true," Yona observed.

"Not more than the rest of us," Zeno said. "But Yoon, you forgot Zeno! What did I get, what did I get?"

"Like you don't know," Yoon grumbled. He flicked Zeno's gold medallion and set it swinging with a _ping!_

Jae-ha finally shrugged himself into motion. He tried to brush Ao off of his sleeve, but the squirrel nimbly leapt over his hand onto his shoulder, and he couldn't do anything more about it without breaking his facade of nonchalance. "So, either way they're looking for the village. What do you intend to _do_ about it?"

Everyone let out their breath. Yona's shoulders fell. The only thing she'd ever heard about the village Jae-ha had come from was that the people there had chained him hand and foot. That led her to expect something like Shin-ah's village, or worse, and she knew it would be asking a lot of him to go back to that place. But… "We can't just leave the village to be attacked."

"So shall we hunt down those rebels?" Jae-ha suggested.

"Kyo-ga's soldiers are already after them," Yoon said, and glanced at Hak and Yona. "If we ran into _them_ …"

Yona frowned. Thinking about those rebels' situation, she guessed that they must be hurt and confused; asking the dragons to crush them felt somehow wrong, unless they were hurting the people, and the army was apparently keeping them from doing that. Besides, Yoon was right. The last time they'd encountered Soo-won, they'd gotten away unscathed and even cooperated, but Kyo-ga's soldiers might still be enforcing the story that Princess Yona was dead and General Hak stood condemned for killing her and the king. It was better to avoid such an encounter — especially putting Hak in that kind of danger. But at the same time, the army's pursuit raised the possibility of the rebels not just invading a dragon village but leading the soldiers there as well. Even if Yona and the dragons went to guard the village — assuming they would even be welcome in doing so — then if the rebels arrived with the army on their heels, it would only pile her problems and theirs together. But still, she was sure that something had to be done…

"We should warn the village," she said finally. "They've been hiding for two thousand years. Once they know about it, they should know what to do." And if the Red Dragon King's seal was there, the villagers could hide it, too — or she and the dragons could get it before the rebels did.

Kija, Shin-ah, and Yoon all nodded.

Hak looked sidelong at Jae-ha. He'd heard the same sliver of a story that Yona had, and at the time he hadn't seemed to take it seriously, but now… "I'd say a warning's good enough for the likes of them."

Jae-ha put on his practiced smile. "I do admire your magnanimity," he said. "But I'm sorry to say, Yona dear, this is one thing I can't help you do."

"Why shouldn't you?" Kija asked. "You of all of us! You've mentioned how they mistreated you. Don't you want to go back there and show them — show them who you've become in spite of them?"

Yona braced herself. She wanted to agree, but it also sounded like too much for someone who hadn't been there to say to someone who had.

Jae-ha didn't so much as flinch. "At this point, it's not a matter of wanting. Years ago, I made a solemn vow that only one person could bring me back to that place." He looked around at the others. "And none of you are that person."

Yona met his gaze and nodded gravely. "That's fine," she said. "I wouldn't want you to break your word." Jae-ha had been so insistent on maintaining his freedom, that everything he did for her was of his own will, it was actually comforting to see him draw a line and prove it. "It shouldn't take all of us just to deliver a warning, anyway."

Hak shrugged. "We could just tie a note to a rock and have the White Snake throw it."

"What if it hit someone?" Yona objected.

"Kidding, kidding…"

"You do know where the village is, though?" Yoon asked Jae-ha.

"I have a general idea where it was thirteen years ago. Where it is now…?" He shrugged.

"Well, it's what we've got to start from," Yoon sighed. "What a pain…"

* * *

Jae-ha pointed to a vague area on Yoon's map, and after their meal the group set out. Kija led the way with Zeno close by, and surprisingly, Jae-ha let the two of them bring him along, near the front.

Further back, Yona matched her stride to Yoon's. "Did you see Tae-jun?" she asked. "How was he?"

"Well —" Yoon stopped to laugh before he could reply. "When I saw him he'd been chased up a tree."

"The rebels?"

"The goats," Yoon said, chuckling. "You know we got one village in the settlement with Sen Province, so he apparently thought he'd do what you did and see what they raised on the same kind of land up there, and he brought back these goats. I heard they can get by eating just about anything, they're good for meat and milk, and in the winter they grow soft, warm hair that makes a valuable cloth."

"Oh, that's good." Yona smiled. The idea behind the Iza seeds she'd gotten might be worth even more than the seeds themselves. So much the better.

"The villagers were really taking to them. The goats taking to Tae-jun, though — yeah, not so much."

Yoon looked ahead to the three dragons walking in front. His face turned more serious, and he lowered his voice. "I wonder, though…"

"Hm?"

"Jae-ha's 'one person.' I wonder who it is."

"Captain Gi-gan, probably," Yona guessed.

"But why would she want to take him back to his village?"

"It doesn't have to be that she'd really do it, it could just be like, 'if it was you I'd even follow you there,' that kind of thing," Yona reasoned.

"Maybe," Yoon admitted, but his mouth twisted, showing him clearly unconvinced. "If it's someone else, though… Maybe we should worry about that person showing up."

Yona took his meaning, but it didn't worry her. "If that happens, I think he'll tell us, and then we can figure it out."

"Mmm." Yoon didn't make any further answer. Tension lingered in his face, but it was more worry than mistrust.

* * *

The journey was a long one. It brought them along the edge of Sky Tribe country, and one day they even trekked along forested mountain slopes where the capital, Kuuto, and Red Dragon Castle could be seen far in the distance.

That night, Yona sat awake gazing at the lights of the city and castle shining like orange stars. Perhaps fatigue from the journey led her thoughts into dark places, and she reflected that her father's tomb was there somewhere. Soo-won had covered up his betrayal, so he would have had the old king buried with royal honors as though nothing was wrong. She also remembered Min-soo, who had covered her escape that night. He must surely have died, and likely been labeled a conspirator. She didn't want to think about what might have been done with him. Whatever was there for either of them, she might never have a chance to see it.

She might never even be able to go back to her uncle Yu-hon's tomb. She still didn't know whether to believe Soo-won's story that her father had killed his, that the gentle, peace-loving King Il had murdered his own brother. Despite everything, she couldn't believe that Soo-won would have lied to her. But she also remembered her father's mournful face, the tears in his eyes every year at the new year's eve festival honoring the dead, when they went to Uncle Yu-hon's tomb to burn incense and make the ceremonial offerings. She also couldn't believe that it was guilt she had seen then, just deep, deep sorrow.

 _I really am too tired tonight_ , she thought, wiping tears from her own aching eyes.

She whipped around at a rustling of grass behind her. It was Hak — no surprise, but still a relief.

"Princess," he said. Just the simple acknowledgment, and he sat down a little way from her, close enough to talk without raising voices but not too close.

As they both looked out at the city, there was no need for words, but Yona was tired of being alone with her thoughts. "I was just thinking," she said, and her voice seemed to ring loud among the insect songs in the night air. "It's strange… I don't feel at all like I need to live in the castle again, but I wish I could go there and burn incense at some of the graves."

"Mm," Hak agreed. "We will someday. One way or another."

Yona's chest tightened. Maybe that had been meant as reassurance — or maybe not even that, maybe he had spoken from his own determination. In either case it didn't give her comfort but dread, that a confrontation with Soo-won might come someday. She wished, rather, that things could just stay the way they were now, together with Yoon and the dragons in this middle place: not accepting defeat but not seeking victory, not swearing fealty but not rebelling, doing good on this path without the heartbreak that lay on either side of it.

 _Heartbreak on either side…_ She was suddenly aware of the hairpin hidden in her dress — the gift from Soo-won. Her hand started toward it, but she curled her fingers and stopped herself. She'd held it enough times to know how it felt without doing it now. She could hardly bear to look at it, but she couldn't bear to throw it away, and so there was nothing to do but stay in the middle place, keep carrying it and all the pain that was attached to it and to even the thought of Soo-won.

Even the thought of him stung, but worse yet was the sight of him. Yona felt herself back on the street in Awa the day after their victory, after she'd fired that fateful arrow at the vicious governor Yan Kum-ji — and then there was Soo-won, appearing from nowhere. She felt it all again, standing there hidden under his cloak: the sunlight filtering in through the pale cloth; the scent of palace incense on his clothes burning her eyes; his voice resonating in his chest barely an inch from her face, impossible blessing and blackest curse all at once —

And the sword at his hip, the rage pounding in her heart demanding revenge. In that moment nothing had seemed to exist beyond the curtain of his cloak. Worldly consequences were all forgotten, and yet she had hesitated, even before he moved a hand to stay her. She had known even as her fingers touched the sword-handle that there was no comfort down that path, only heartbreak, and she couldn't move, couldn't even speak. She could only stand frozen, trapped in that middle place.

Now, on the mountainside overlooking the castle, Yona pulled a deep breath of the cool night air and slapped herself on both cheeks.

"Hm?" Hak looked at her.

"It's nothing! I just need to… It's, it's nothing." She needed to sleep, but she imagined going back to the tent, and then she imagined Hak looking out over the capital alone, and she decided to stay. Before long, though, she gave in to fatigue and curled up on the ground. She heard Hak walking away, but by then she was too tired to get up.

She was just drifting off to sleep when something brushed against her leg, and she felt a blanket being draped over her. She was sure of who was doing it without opening her eyes, and the feel of a broad, strong hand clasping her shoulder removed any doubt.

"Thank you," she breathed.

"Sleep well, Princess," Hak answered.

* * *

The next day they set out again, and they walked for several days more. Clearly those rebels must have been grasping at straws if they were asking random villagers about a place so far away, but Yona's resolve didn't waver, and outside of Yoon's habitual griping, no one else questioned it either. Better to deliver the warning than to risk underestimating desperate people.

Jae-ha had nothing at all to say about the mission. If the others discussed it and someone asked him a direct question, he would give a brief, simple answer or deflect, always with his characteristic wit. The others might occasionally hear a note of strain in his voice, especially as they neared their destination, but it was never more than subtle, and by that time they knew that if they tried to point it out and pin him down on it, they wouldn't be able to catch him.

At last they came to a countryside that folded into stark hills, with rocky slopes emerging from hollow sweeps of grassland. Trees were scattered here and there, seldom enough of them in one spot offer much cover. They moved carefully, staying to low ground, until one morning Shin-ah announced, "We're close." He had spotted a green-haired watchman on a nearby hill. The group stopped in one of the rare clumps of trees to plan their approach.

"No point sneaking past him," Hak observed. "In fact, we could just give him the word and be on our way."

"Please, allow me," Kija said. "They may distrust strangers, but they should know that they're dealing with another dragon warrior."

Yona nodded. Kija was right, and his claw was the best way to offer proof. Jae-ha simply wasn't going, and it was never pretty when Shin-ah or Zeno had to prove their powers. But letting Kija go alone… "I'll go with you," she declared.

"There's no need."

Hak also came forward, shouldering his glaive. "There could be trouble…"

"I know! And I know you want to protect me, but I can't come this close and not even meet one person!" Yona blurted it out, but then thought perhaps she'd been too honest and looked over her shoulder at Jae-ha. He didn't meet her gaze, only stood there with his arms crossed, just like when they'd first gotten the news — complete with Ao clinging to his sleeve.

"As I was saying," Hak continued, loudly enough to pull her attention back to him, "that means that if you're going, I'm going too."

"Oh, okay, then. The three of us."

Shin-ah touched her shoulder, hesitating to go with them but also hesitating to let them go without him.

Yona saw it, and she didn't think he needed the possible reminder of what he'd been through himself in the past. Besides… "Shin-ah, I need you to stay behind and watch us. That way you can let the others know if we get in too much trouble. Okay?"

He nodded.

"Well then, let's go," she said. Kija nodded.

Hak waved back to the others as they set out. "We'll try to be back by lunch."

"Zeno's cooking," Yoon called back.

"He is?" Zeno asked. "I hadn't heard about that."

"You heard me just now or you wouldn't be asking." Yoon looked after their departing delegation and sighed. "We come all this way just to turn around and leave again… Well," he admitted, "I hope it's that easy, anyway…"

Silence fell after that. They didn't plan on being there long enough to set up camp, so Yoon just took a book out of his bag and sat down to read. Shin-ah, true to his word, gazed into the distance, watching Yona and the others with his dragon sight. Zeno contrived to look pitiful rifling through the cooking gear and provisions.

Jae-ha sat, perhaps a bit stiffly. He had hardly spoken since they'd come to this countryside, but now he was the one to break the silence as he stood up. This time he did go so far as to pick Ao off his sleeve despite chittering protests, and he handed the squirrel to Shin-ah. "As long as we're here, I'm going to look around a bit," he said. His tone was a measured attempt at "casual."

"Be careful," Yoon said, looking up from his book. "If you jump, they might see you—"

"I don't need you to tell me that!" Jae-ha replied; for the first time it came out as a snap.

Yoon opened his mouth again, but Jae-ha was gone before he could say anything else.

Shin-ah watched, gaping a little in quiet dismay, but he couldn't abandon his lookout.

Zeno watched, too, his eyes turning serious. He maneuvered his pretense at work closer to Shin-ah, and when Yoon had gradually become engrossed in his book again, Zeno leaned around behind Shin-ah's mask and whispered softly. "I'll go after Green Dragon."

Shin-ah nodded gratefully, and Ao leapt onto Zeno's shoulder before he slipped away muttering "firewood, firewood" to cover his escape.

* * *

Once he was safely clear of their uncamped camp, Zeno made no attempt at stealth. In fact when he caught up enough to see Jae-ha ahead of him, he broke into a purposefully-noisy loping run until his fellow dragon turned and saw him.

He came up close enough that he wouldn't have to raise his voice. "Zeno believes in the buddy system," he said.

Jae-ha regarded him with narrowed eyes.

"Ah, Zeno also believes in personal space!" he added, with a defensive wave of his hands. Ao, perched on his shoulder, echoed the gesture and chittered agreement. "Don't worry about us, we'll just be around."

Jae-ha finally sighed. "Suit yourself," and he started walking again.

True to his word, Zeno let the space open up between them again and followed at a distance, keeping Jae-ha in sight but not getting close.

Being near his old village was clearly harder for for Jae-ha than he wanted to let on, and Zeno knew very well why that should be. Once, years ago, he'd come to Green Dragon Village in the night and had seen a half-grown boy, chained and bruised. Now as a grown man, Jae-ha still bore the scars of it and didn't want to let them show or have them prodded. A quiet walk alone in these hills might be the best thing for him right now, Zeno thought — as long as he wasn't _really_ alone and knew that he wasn't.

So they just wandered along the grassy slopes. Ao found a patch of sweet clover and stuffed her cheeks with it, and Zeno found some wild onions. He dug them up with his bare hands and spotted a little stream to wash them off in, looking up every so often to make sure he wasn't losing Jae-ha. As he looked while he was going down to the water, he found that Jae-ha was looking back at him — still some way ahead, but just standing and watching him. Zeno washed the herbs and tucked them away in his robes without worry, then stood up and waved. _Okay, I'm ready to go now!_

Jae-ha had just raised a hand in reply — _Message received_ — when he suddenly whipped around to face one of the surrounding hillsides.

Zeno followed his gaze, hearing a small sound in that direction; all he could see was a slight rustling of leaves where some bushes clung between the slopes. Jae-ha, however, was still tensed and focused on that spot, and a moment later a trilling whistle sounded through the air — too loud and sharp to be a bird.

Jae-ha set off directly away from those bushes and that sound, but he held himself back; Zeno was able to run and catch up with him.

"Was that —?"

Jae-ha confirmed it with a harsh chuckle. "This really isn't funny…"

"You don't have to slow down for me, I'll be fine no matter what," Zeno said, but he got no answer. "Or if I broke my legs we could really go fast."

"That's not funny either," Jae-ha informed him.

Trying to gain as much ground as easily as possible, they favored downhill paths — and the further they went, it seemed, the higher the hills above them rose, and the lower the valleys they followed dipped. At last they found themselves funneled into what could almost have been a dry stream bed, a narrow earthen path with ground rising sharply on either side.

Zeno began to have a bad feeling; if this turned into a dead end, it would be a bad place to be cornered. Indeed, looking up, he thought the path would have to curve sharply not to run directly into a rocky hillside.

As he was thinking it, Jae-ha stopped short in front of him for a moment. "What is this?" he wondered aloud, then moved forward again, more slowly.

Further down the dry channel, the path was flanked on either side with wooden poles. Some were recently-cut, smooth and yellow-white; others had weathered grey with their grain lines cut deep by rain and sun. Clearly they had been put there by human hands. This path was leading to something, and Zeno felt sure that it was nothing good.

They were already among the poles when he caught Jae-ha's sleeve. "Hey, Green Dragon, this doesn't look good. Let's get out of here and start circling back —"

He stopped. Jae-ha had turned toward him but immediately gone wide-eyed at some distraction and looked to one side of him, then the other. Zeno turned to look, too. His arm brushed one of the poles and he instinctively raised a hand to it. Ao jumped across and climbed up it, and as his eyes followed her, he saw that the wood was carved. This one was so weathered that it was hard to make out, but he could guess at the design, and he ran his fingers over a crude rendition of a human face. He looked around to find that all the poles were carved with such figures; he hadn't noticed them until now because they all faced one way — down the path.

The bad feeling deepened, and he knew that more than tactical considerations lay behind it.

"Have you seen anything like this before?" Jae-ha asked.

Zeno nodded. "They're meant to ward off evil spirits. Every village used to have these these facing out from their gates, although you don't see them much now."

"Facing away from their territory…" Jae-ha echoed.

"I think this is different." Zeno couldn't begin to say how many times he'd seen totem poles by ones and twos at village gates, but never had he seen a gauntlet of them like this.

"Well, 'evil spirits this way' still means somewhere they wouldn't want to follow us," Jae-ha reasoned with brittle confidence, and he continued down the path.

Ao gave a questioning "P'kyuu?" from atop the pole.

Zeno motioned her to stay where she was before turning to follow Jae-ha. "'Evil spirits this way' might mean somewhere we don't want to go either!" With each step he grew more uneasy. But then, with each step he began to feel more drawn to follow the path to the end, because he began to sense to exactly where it led. By the time the channel brought them to a fold in the hillside and at last revealed a rough, gate-sized portal in the rock face, the suspicion had grown strong, too strong to turn back from.

This was not a stone-built monument like the blue dragon's tomb they'd encountered, just a natural fissure in the rock that had been widened, the floor built up with dirt and gravel, larger stones only where they were needed to terrace the sinking ground into steps. Just the one chamber, perhaps the size of a cottage or two, and then even before the sunlight from the entrance faded, the cavern ended, closing in around a stone structure something like a well with a wooden cover.

The stones of the "well" were carefully cut and fitted to rise from the irregular floor and walls into a perfect circle. Here and there the sides of it were streaked with a shiny, whitish crust that looked like hot-poured wax, but Zeno touched it and found it hard as rock. Drops of water from the ceiling had deposited a new layer of minerals there.

The well itself must have stood for a thousand years or more, but the wooden cover had been cut recently and bound together with no particular care. At its joints were wooden talismans, roughly carved and in various states of weathering like the poles outside. They were attached with bits of dried grass, and thin cords of the same twisted leaves were the only thing binding the cover over the well-mouth, and yet…

Inside that well was where the ominous feeling was coming from, like claws scrabbling to reach through the gaps in the wood. It seemed like the talismans should rattle. It seemed like the wood should groan and crack.

It seemed like Jae-ha should feel it, too — he'd been sensitive in the blue dragon's tomb — but with one look at him, Zeno knew it was too much to expect that he feel anything outside himself right now. He was still trying to hide it, but his breath was quick and shallow; even when he tried crossing his arms, the next moment his hand unconsciously wandered back to his face.

"It's true, isn't it?" he asked. "This place…"

Zeno reached into one of the larger gaps in the wooden cover, dipping his fingers into the well. As before, the spirits couldn't enter the yellow dragon's body, but it felt like dipping his fingers into charging rapids of seething water — or of dragon blood. That much he felt for certain. "Yes. This is the green dragons' tomb."

 _Shuten,_ he thought, _I'm glad you're not here to see this —_

He yanked his hand back from a sudden sharp sensation as though something had bitten his fingers. It happened so quickly that he didn't know what it was, but he knew at once that he couldn't leave things like this.

"Listen, Green Dragon," he said, "you should go. This isn't a good place for you to be. I'll make sure your way is clear, and then, by yourself, even on the ground you'll be fast. And then it's me, so whatever happens here, I'll be fine —"

"As if I'd leave you here!" Jae-ha snapped. "Stop being stupid!" His hand on his face had begun to shake.

Zeno looked at him. "You're being very blunt today."

"I know that." Suddenly, he gritted his teeth and punched the cavern wall.

In the same instant, the presence in the well surged up stronger. _I was wrong_ , Zeno realized. _It's not that he's too distracted to feel it — he's too distracted to know what it is he's feeling. They pulled him here without him knowing it,_ _and now they're feeding off each other and he doesn't realize. This is bad…_

"Come on, then," he said. "Let's go together. I can't just leave this place like it is, but I have plenty of time for that. Right now, you shouldn't be here. Not anywhere near here."

Jae-ha didn't seem to hear — or if he did, he'd been pushed so far he couldn't respond. His breath was coming harder; he was almost panting. He gripped the fringe of his hair, pushed even beyond caring how it looked, and Zeno realized something else: even the spirits in the well couldn't have made Jae-ha fall apart like this if he hadn't been halfway there already. That was how severely being spotted by the villagers had shaken him.

 _Why didn't I realize it was this bad, when I was here before?_ Zeno asked himself. _Why did I just walk away?_ And now he'd be walking away again, from all the others, but there was nothing for it. _I'm sorry. You'll all have to wait a little bit longer. Right now…_ He touched Jae-ha's arm. "Come on. Let's go."

Jae-ha pulled away from him. "So I'm supposed to run away if those people so much as look at me?" He shook with silent, skeletal laughter, bracing himself with that fistful of his hair. When he spoke again, he tried to cover it over with levity, and his voice half-sang with the strain. "Well, I already started, I might as well keep it up. Apparently that's all it takes for them to keep me on the ground — to get me inside stone walls and chained down —" He punched the wall of the cavern again.

"That's why I'm saying, let's get out of here!" Zeno tried to get an arm around him. He thought maybe he should smash his own hand against the wall hard enough to regenerate it and drag Jae-ha away. He thought maybe he should have done that before now.

For a moment, Jae-ha was willing to be led, but then his eyes fell on the well with its crude wooden seals, and at once he began to laugh — a terrible, uncontrollable, joyless laugh. " _And look! If you stay here, they go right on doing it even after you're dead!_ "

Zeno felt Jae-ha's muscles tense under his arm. _Yeah, should have regenerated sooner._

But now it was too late. As Jae-ha started to move, Zeno tried to brace against him, but his normal strength wasn't nearly enough. It might as well have been Ao trying to hold him back.

Jae-ha spun at the well in a kick, lashing out at it with all the power of the green dragon's leg.

The impact sounded like a close clap of thunder. The loose-bound wooden well cover splintered, shot into the cavern wall and splintered again, the wooden talismans scattering. The ancient crusted stone of the well itself broke and flew apart.

Before the thunderclap was even past, another sound welled up around it and overtook it — a roar like storm-surge breaking on a beach, like water bursting through a broken dam.

Jae-ha gasped and took a step back — he heard it, too. He saw it, or saw something. Zeno braced his shoulder against him and tried to run for the cave mouth. He glanced back and saw black, ghostly energy surging up from the broken well. He saw it for one instant before the wave of it broke over the two of them.

Untamed power spun around him in every direction. It was like being caught up in the waves of an angry sea, but where it flowed over him he felt not water but scales, claws, teeth, gritty and black like a torrent of ink trying to form itself by blind primal force into an image — trying to paint itself into raging dragons.

Zeno couldn't hear anything over the roar and howl of it. He tried to call out to Jae-ha but couldn't hear his own voice. He tried to cling to him but the surging energy tore his friend from his hands and dashed him about. The spirits couldn't enter him, but now that only meant they could crash up against him. He couldn't tell if he was hitting them or hitting earth or stone, if he was still in the cave or down the well or outside in the sun — they blotted out the sun —

And then, like a wave rushing back out to sea, they flung him down on the ground and were gone.

The sun returned, but a black blot remained in the center of it and Zeno still lay in its shadow. He tried to pick himself up and gather his senses. He made out a voice somewhere above him…

"…They never listen to me…" It was a man's voice, familiar, but at first Zeno couldn't place it.

He blinked and squinted. He was back out on the path. The totem poles were flung about and skewed and broken. A tall figure was standing over him with their back to him, facing further up the path where the "wave" of ghosts must have gone.

Zeno managed to look up at the human shape framed against the sun. It began to turn toward him, and he caught the silhouette — long hair tied back in a thin, high topknot; a short, unruly fringe of forelocks…

His eyes widened despite the burning of suddenly letting in the light.

The figure grinned at him — or snarled, or both at once — with a gleam of jagged teeth. "Well, _you_ sure took your time stopping by."

 **Chapter 1 - END**


	2. Angry Ghosts

The sentry on the hill was alarmed when Yona, Hak, and Kija hailed him, but he stood his ground. When they came close, he still didn't seem sure what to do with them, but he was willing to take them back to the village — whether as messengers or as prisoners, Hak suspected, would be decided when they got there.

The village stood in a high meadow, hidden by the hills but wide enough to allow a bit of sprawl. The houses were mostly wood and thatch shored up with rock, although Yona saw a stone-built wall here and there. As the sentry led her into the village, she looked all around, curious to take everything in, but after the villages where she'd met Kija and Shin-ah, this one seemed if anything strangely ordinary, just rather old-fashioned. People were simply going about their business…

And that was where something started to feel wrong. Villagers would look toward this party of intruders then turn away, maybe whispering among neighbors too far away for Yona to hear, but no one was curious enough to approach them; no one even came over to ask the sentry what was happening. Could it be that visitors weren't strange here? No — the one child who stared and pointed was quickly bustled away indoors. More like this was a place where people didn't ask questions.

The sentry led them to the largest house in the village, and some other men with spears appeared to take over the guard. As they neared the door, there was a high trilling sound in the distance. Yona would have taken it for the cry of a bird, but all the men turned toward it in surprise.

"I'll get the elder," the sentry said, in sudden haste. "Wait here." Whether he was talking to the guests or the guards was unclear.

The guards brought them to the hearth-room and took posts outside the doors. As soon as they were alone, Kija started looking over his shoulder, toward that oddly-significant bird cry.

"What is it?" Yona asked.

"Jae-ha started moving around after we left," he said. "Zeno is with him, so I didn't worry — but since we heard that sound, they've started moving directly away from here."

"They were spotted," Hak surmised. "Well, between those two, they should be able to handle it."

Yona frowned. She agreed that the two of them were probably safe, but being spotted here was exactly what Jae-ha hadn't wanted. _Maybe we should have left him in the last town_ , she thought. He hadn't said anything, but then, for days now the things he hadn't been saying were meaningful in their own way.

They waited some time before the door opened and the guards led in a very old man with a bent back and a white beard. His cane thumped on the wooden floor, but it didn't slow him down much as he came to the hearth. They sat waiting for him, but he didn't sit, only looked down at them. "Who are you?" he asked without pleasantries. "Why did you come here?"

Kija caught Yona's eye, and she nodded a _go ahead_. He edged forward on his knees, defiantly decorous, and held out his right hand. "Elder, do you know what this is?"

"I was told about it. So you're a dragon warrior, eh?"

"I am the inheritor of the divine blood of the white dragon," he confirmed. "I come here with my master, the reincarnation of the Red Dragon King."

The old man at last sat down, but with a long-suffering sigh. "You're looking for the green dragon, I suppose."

"No, he's with us already," Yona said, and she made a dainty bow. "Thank you for the care you've shown our friend." It was less than fully honest, but Kija's demeanor triggered old habits for her, and being rude wouldn't help anything.

"I see. Fine then," the elder said. "I was told something about a message."

Kija just stared, momentarily baffled, and Yona pressed forward into the gap.

"Yes," she said. "We were in Fire Tribe country about a week ago, and we heard a group of rebels were looking for this village. They might not get this far, but we wanted to make sure you knew so you weren't attacked by surprise."

"They wouldn't be likely to find us even if they wanted to — unless they followed you," the old man accused.

"Not likely," Hak spoke up. "We heard about them second-hand; there's no reason they'd even know about us."

"The blue dragon is also with us, who has the dragon's eyes," Kija added. "If we were being followed, he would surely have seen it."

The elder sighed again. There was something in his face as if he didn't believe what they were telling him. "What would you have us do?" he asked.

"I thought you'd know what to do," Yona replied innocently.

The elder turned aside and rubbed his nose with one brown, papery hand. He glanced again at Kija's claw, then at Hak's glaive, and this time Yona saw it clearly: it wasn't skepticism in his eyes, but distrust. Even the question "what would you have us do?" hadn't been seeking their advice, but seeking hints to their motives. Now that distrust turned to hard calculation of how to deal with two armed and dangerous men.

"Elder?" one of the guards asked, after several moments of silence.

"I have received your message," the old man said at last. "Leave us. After you've gone we'll do as we must."

"All right," Yona said. "But I have to ask you—"

"Hm?"

"We heard that the rebels are looking for this village because you might have the Red Dragon King's jade seal."

"Never seen such a thing," the elder said, dismissing the idea too readily and offhandedly to have chosen a lie. "You can see we live simply here. We have no use for jade trinkets, and we know each other by our faces, not—"

The elder was cut short and glared as Kija suddenly sprang to his feet, staring off into the distance. He whirled back with a hasty bow. "Please forgive the impertinence, but we must take our leave now. Milord —" He offered Yona a hand.

She took it, confused but trusting, and Kija lifted her to her feet. Hak was on his feet as well, and by the look in his eyes he could tell that something was wrong.

The guards moved uncertainly, but the elder said "Let them go," and they stood aside. As Yona and the others hurried to the village gates they heard the elder call out again across the square, "Let them go."

Nonetheless, Hak watched behind them as they left the village behind. "Nice people," he grumbled.

"What happened?" Yona asked.

"Jae-ha suddenly started moving, very fast," Kija told her, "and Zeno hasn't moved since then. Shin-ah saw it, too; he's coming."

"Anyway, White Snake, what was with the whole theater performance back there?" Hak asked as they hurried along.

Kija just kept forging ahead, but Yona fell back to give Hak her own answer. "I think Kija's mad." Maybe at first, he'd been thinking how he would address another dragon warrior's Granny, but before long his formality had been downright vindictive. She had an inkling that she knew what he was angry about, too, or rather she felt it but couldn't put it into words.

As they hurried along, Yona heard another trill — this time sharp and close. "Is that—?"

"He's close!" Kija broke into a run, but by the time they reached the top of next ridge, the green dragon's presence had already moved away. "We're too late," he panted.

"Look!" Yona pointed down the slope.

Below them was a narrow valley where a small stream fed lush bed of green. Where she pointed, three men lay in the torn and trampled grass. One lay still; another groaned and clutched his arm.

Yona hurried down toward them, but as she got close, her foot struck something hard, like a stick hidden in the grass. She nearly tripped, and as she checked herself to get her balance, something caught around her ankle, something thin and supple but harder than the grass.

She looked down, and a cold, hair-raising shock ran up her neck. Jae-ha had just been here. The three men must have been a party sent to find him. And the thing she'd tripped on was a broken bow.

They quickly checked the men and found no life-threatening injuries. One was stunned but groaned when prodded. The other two had broken limbs.

Yona saw the whistle around one of their necks. She also saw another bow in the grass, along with arrows spilled from one man's quiver, and she picked them up.

One of the men twisted around to look at them. "Who are you?"

"You already whistled for help, right? They'll be here soon," Yona told him. She saw his quiver still full, and reached down over his shoulder while he still clutched a broken arm. "Sorry, I'm taking these," and she plucked the bundle of arrows and started away. "Hak, Kija, let's go."

Kija led the way further into hills until they came to a deep-cut path leading straight into a hillside. The place was strewn with wooden poles that had been flung and broken as though in a whirlwind, and further down the path, they found Zeno lying curled on the ground. Ao sat on his upturned shoulder even as Shin-ah shook him. Yoon was pouring handfuls of water to throw drops at his face.

"What happened?" Yona asked.

"We don't know!" Yoon said. "Shin-ah just saw Jae-ha take off, and now —" He flung another handful of water; Zeno's eyelids fluttered a little, but that was all. "He won't wake up! If something knocked _him_ out…"

Nothing they knew of could hurt Zeno badly enough to knock him unconscious, at least not for long. Now, that meant they had no idea what they were dealing with, but as Yona looked at him, she had a feeling…

"Oh," she realized. "I think he's okay."

"Huh?" Yoon looked at her.

"Ao," she said.

Yoon only looked more confused, but Shin-ah understood even before she explained: "Ao's not trying to feed him."

Indeed the squirrel sat on Zeno's shoulder twitching her tail and looking up at them all with bright, unconcerned eyes. "P'kyuu?

* * *

"In our day, this was a shrine," Shuten was explaining.

They sat on the edge of the broken well. For some reason, as they spoke, Zeno envisioned the mouth of the little cave-tomb opening onto the sea and crashing waves occasionally flinging drops of spray into his face.

"This thing," — Shuten patted the ancient stones — "is a place where the cave gets narrow and goes straight down, and people would drop offerings into it. I was here pouring in some good wine when the dragon god gave me their blood — and then _that_ turned out to be one hell of an offering: 'Sure, take my body and all my kids' — so that's why I was buried here, and that started it. Of course it doesn't look like a shrine anymore; robbers took everything worth stealing, but by then the villagers knew the kids would cause trouble if they got a chance, and the well had enough of its old power that a few half-assed talismans were enough to direct it and hold them in. Even when the village moved away from here, whenever a green dragon died, the village priest would still bring their ashes back."

"But now the well's broken." Zeno looked around at it; next to where he was sitting, an entire side was caved in where Jae-ha had kicked it.

"It had to happen eventually. _Should've_ happened a long time ago. Now… Damn, this is a mess."

"But why are they all like that?"

"That isn't all of them — thank the gods for that at least. Some of them got away like this new one did and never came back, and they're buried who-knows-where, and some of them here were able to rest in peace and make it to the next world. It's just the ones who can't."

Zeno remembered what had surged up from the broken well, the roiling waves of spectral, serpentine bodies, green only like pine needles at midnight. They weren't true dragons; one encounter with a real one was enough to know better than that. No, these were only beasts of bitterness and rage, what was left of a dragon warrior when their humanity was burned away. "I knew the current successor — Jae-ha — I knew they had chained him up, but this… What have the villagers been doing to them all this time?" He suddenly realized, and whirled on Shuten — " _You're_ here! What did they do to _you_!?"

"Oh, they didn't do anything to _me_ ," he said, and made a grimace that showed his teeth. "If I'm here, it's because of what **I** did — because when you get right down to it the rest is my fault."

"You couldn't have known —"

"I'm telling you, I did know," Shuten insisted. "In the end, I did."

He dropped into a heavy silence for a moment. Zeno felt that the story was coming, and he settled himself to listen.

"The second green dragon was my daughter," Shuten said.

"I never felt another green dragon until after you…" Zeno trailed off.

"Well, she might have been hiding in my shadow. After she was born I don't think I ever went anywhere without her. I was so used to using my power for fighting, but here was this kid — to her it was just fun, to be able to fly in this big country. It made me think, 'hey, this is a blessing, isn't it?' Back then, there was no way to know that I was going to die when the power passed all the way over to her — but even if I had known, I don't think it would have mattered that much."

The ghost smiled at the memories. Of the four original dragons, Shuten had been the fiercest, but Zeno found himself thinking with mild surprise that if you could pick one of the four to be a parent, Shuten might well have been the best choice.

"I taught her enough to look out for herself, don't get me wrong, but she hadn't seen the war, and I did want to keep it that way…" Shuten's smile faded, for reasons not yet clear. "Everyone in our village wanted to keep it that way."

"She wasn't quite fifteen when I finally got sick, and back then no one knew what it was. I had a feeling, but I thought I'd lived without the power before, why couldn't I live without it again? It would just be rough going for a while — that was what I told myself, even when I was stuck in bed and would just wake up now and then and not know what time of day or night it was or who was even around me — except for her. I always knew her.

"Finally, I woke up one of those times, and I was hearing a strange sound, and I yelled 'what is that?' or I tried to, but nobody answered. No one was there. I finally got up. I could barely stand up, but somehow I dragged myself toward that sound. I don't even know where it was or how I got there, but I came to a door, and I knew that was where it was coming from — and I knew it was her. She was yelling and she was pounding, not on the door but on something, and I could hear something else but I didn't know what. It took me forever just to get a grip on the damned door so I could push it back.

"She saw it was me. And she got all in a panic, like 'Father, you should be in bed' — and I started to stumble and she ran to catch me —"

Zeno had a sinking feeling where this was going even before Shuten finished —

"—And she hit the end of the chains.

"I tried to go over to her, but maybe it was the shock, or maybe that was when the last of the power decided to leave. I fell on the floor and I couldn't move, but for some reason my mind went crystal clear. Just my head and shoulders landed where she could reach, and she was holding me. She was stroking my face, and those damned chains jingled right in front of my eyes. She was saying 'Hang on, Father, when the elder gets back I'll make him let me go, and then I'll go to Red Dragon Castle and get the best doctor in the kingdom. Once the elder comes, I'll be back in a flash, you'll see' — and that was what it was about. There were some skirmishes then. She might have been a target, and no one wanted to let that happen, but she was hell-bent on going — to try to save me — and they decided they had to stop her.

"And somehow, right then I could see it so clearly, that this was how it was going to go. I tried to…" Shuten gritted his teeth for a moment before he could continue. "I tried to say 'Forgive me,' but I couldn't even make my tongue move…"

"Shuten…"

Zeno held out a hand, but Shuten waved it away and collected himself. It was unlike him to let such vulnerability show, but then, he'd been waiting two thousand years to unburden himself.

"Eventually the elder did get back," he said, "and he did let her go, because by then she didn't have any reason to take off.

"She's not one of them," he added, nodding toward the empty well. "With her they hardly ever did that, and when they did, she didn't fight it too much or take it too hard, because she loved everybody and she knew they really loved her.

"But seeing it just once was enough to know — enough to know that I'd saddled the kids with a mess I couldn't just walk away from. That kind of power, a power to move around wherever you want, so high and so fast no one can catch you — how do you protect something like that? What were they going to have to do to keep that tied down to one little village where they could keep it secret and guard it?

"And as time went on, it happened. The villagers lost track of what they were supposed to be doing and why. Green dragons came along who fought tooth and nail to get away and fly, the villagers didn't know what to do but fight back, and everyone just got more and more frustrated until…"

"Until this," Zeno surmised.

"Right now isn't the worst it's been," Shuten said. "For a while, when the kids got big enough to be a handful they'd just kill them."

"What!?" Zeno stared in shock, both at the cruelty and the sacrilege.

"The village women finally made them stop — as long as the last green dragon was alive they didn't have to worry so much about losing a kid that way — but by then… Before that, I could manage things. The kids would get here and I could at least do something for them, but that many, that fast, and that upset… Before it was done they were all constantly setting each other off, and I couldn't shout loud enough for them to hear me over their own racket."

Zeno braced himself on his knees, his breath ragged. "This was happening for two thousand years and I never did anything." He gritted his teeth and started cuffing himself on one temple.

An unexpected blow landed on the other side, just hard enough to get his attention. "Look, Yellow, we don't have time for your lousy self-image right now," Shuten snarled. "Not unless you want to lose another one."

That dragged Zeno quickly and miserably back to the present. "Jae-ha. I didn't even see what happened."

"His body's possessed," Shuten said. "That outnumbered, what was he going to do?"

"And now that they're free of the seal, with the green dragon's power, who knows where they'll take him —"

"Are you even listening?" the ghost questioned. "I told you: _these are the ones that can't get away._ "

* * *

Some time later, Zeno finally blinked and opened his eyes. He found himself looking up into the underside of a thatched roof. The light filtering into the room was the dimly-pitched gray of a cloudy evening.

He flung himself upright. _How did it get so late? I wasn't talking to Shuten for even an hour —_

"Zeno, you're awake!" Yona broke in on his thoughts and threw her arms around him.

"P'kyuu!" Ao agreed.

"What happened?" Yoon demanded. "When you wouldn't wake up, I didn't know what to do!"

Kija spoke before he could answer. "We could feel that you were with Jae-ha, but then he ran off and you stopped moving." Shin-ah nodded agreement.

"It's not him," Zeno said. "Green Dragon's possessed."

"Mmm." Hak frowned. "From the look of the place, I was afraid it was another one of those."

 _Another one_ like the time Shin-ah had been possessed — and indeed Shin-ah had the kind of worried look that only comes with deep empathy. But that had been _one_ blue dragon, deeply hurt and angry but at least able to speak and to listen. If only they'd been that lucky this time.

"We're in the village?" Zeno asked.

"So far," Hak answered. "They're not happy. The elder all but accused us of bringing him back here on purpose just to ruin their day."

"Shin-ah and I tried to follow him," Kija explained. "He ran every time we got close, but always stayed near the village. Whatever spirit is possessing him, it seems it wants some revenge on this place."

"Spirit _ **s**_ , lots of them — and yeah, they do." Even now, Zeno felt the Green Dragon's presence in the hills not far away.

"This is the best place, so we don't miss him, but when he comes, we have to get to him before the villagers do," Yona declared.

"It probably won't be until after nightfall," Zeno said. "I think…" — _well, Shuten thought_ — "I think they'll try to stay hidden… as long as archers have light."

* * *

Jae-ha had just had time to see the dark miasma surging up from the broken well, just had time to say to himself, _I did not think that through_ — and then the wave had hit him.

It felt like being hurled into an angry sea, but even as the currents dragged him this way and that, they flowed right through him. Even if he struggled upward, even if he found what felt like the surface and got his face above it, he was still drowning — it filled him with that kind of maddening, burning, roaring pain.

But it wasn't water — it was emotion. The terror and frustration of captivity, the bitterness of being despised. Everything he'd been trying for days to brush aside and keep to himself — there couldn't have been this much of it, surely — but now it was loose and out of control, tearing him apart from inside. Fear, anger, vengeance —

 _No, this isn't me._ It was the desire for revenge that made him realize it. He felt its heat, but it didn't burn him. It wasn't coming from him. _I don't want it, just let me go!_

And then he felt how he was being held. Claws and teeth and scales churned around him and through him, and he had a sensation slightly as if it were Kija and Shin-ah and Zeno but much darker, tainted and dim and feeling somehow like a reflection of himself.

 _The green dragons' tomb, eh?_ he remembered. _I always knew I wasn't getting special treatment._ These were the angry ghosts of his predecessors, who apparently hadn't had it any better than he had.

When he knew what they were, he braced himself for a set of those teeth and claws to feel especially familiar, but it didn't happen. The previous green dragon, Garou, had been a miserable failure as a human being let alone a dragon, a weak man who bowed and scraped to the villagers who despised him. Rather than even trying for freedom, he had vented his frustrations on the one person who'd been placed under his power, hated himself for it every time but did it again every time until practically the very day he died. Still, it seemed that in the last moments he'd bought his way free and into the next world. Despite everything, that was a relief — and an encouragement.

 _If you couldn't catch him, do you think you'll catch me?_

Jae-ha began to swim, or it felt like swimming. By then he was enough accustomed to the pain to know where he ended and the ghosts began, enough to think and to move in his own direction amid the flow. Every stroke still burned with fear and agony, and at every stroke he was dragged or flung in a different direction. He had no idea whether he was making headway, or whether the way he was trying to go led anywhere. The only thing he had to guide him was now and then a vague sense of light in the sky. There was no telling how long it might be before he found solid ground, or if there was even any solid ground to find in this place

And yet it was all so vivid, and he laughed to himself, feeling utterly alive and feeling, too, as if he'd done something like this before.

After all, it wasn't so different from the time years ago when he'd finally flown from the village for good. Before that, he had managed to taste the brilliant, teeming chaos of the outside world only in brief snatches, like a visitor at a festival for an hour before Garou would track his dragon blood and drag him back. Very soon after his final escape, he'd found that trying to cope with that brilliant chaos day after day was a different matter and one he knew practically nothing about. Back then, everything had been painful — frustrating, embarrassing, with no way to know which direction was forward or if there even was such a direction.

Now as then, there was nothing to do but forge ahead and relish the feeling. _And I thought I'd spent all my inheritance already…_

But while the world outside the village had gradually turned solid, here there was nothing but the crashing, tearing waves of teeth and claws and scales and rage. At times they flung him against something hard, but it was nothing he could hold onto; it only gave him the sense that his body had literally struck something — he didn't know what. The spirits had possessed his body, obviously, but had they done it for some purpose? Could they even do anything coherent? Or were they just venting their frustrations on his flesh, like Garou had done? Would there be anything left when they were finished?

Worse yet, that fleeting sense of light in the sky was fading. He kept struggling toward it; it felt like he fought and swam for days, but the beacon grew dimmer and dimmer until he was left blind in the dark.

 _This is really not funny at all…_

For the first time, the thought crept up on him that this would be a terribly unsightly way to end.

* * *

As if in warning, thick clouds had gathered over the village as the day went on, bringing an early nightfall that deepened into a blank, enclosing wall of starless darkness. The villagers set up tall, standing torches in the square to create a central pool of light, and some of them carried torches in their hands.

Yona and her friends also waited in the square, the dragons watching Jae-ha's presence for the moment he — or rather the ghosts — made a move. If they started toward him from the same place the villagers did, it was the best way Yona knew not to risk being outflanked, but it was still dangerous. They would still have to move quickly if they were to reach him first.

And they had to reach him first. Yona saw some of the village men wearing quivers and testing bows. This time she couldn't run and snatch them all away. She caught sight of the village elder again.

"Make certain all the women and children stay indoors," he was telling someone.

Yona ran to him. "Tell everyone to put their weapons away. You don't have to hurt him."

"I can't ask my people not to defend themselves," the old man said.

"I'm saying you don't have to! We'll take care of it!"

"I can't ask them to rely on strangers." He didn't even look at her as he spoke. "If it comes to that, you'll have another green dragon before long."

Yona gasped, but before she could find words in the heat of the shock, Kija shouted, "He's coming!"

The words were barely out of his mouth when a thunderous boom sounded from the darkness, trailing pattering sounds almost like splashing water. Another boom, people screaming, a slow, wood-splitting crash —

Yona ran toward the sound. Torchlight came right behind her and revealed people running, then the still-settling wreck of a cottage.

"Did everyone get out?" Yoon shouted.

A woman's voice answered, "Yes!" A child was crying.

But Jae-ha wasn't there. Yona looked around and found that Kija had already turned in another direction. He was facing into the darkness, and from there came another pounding crash.

"Out of the houses! Get everyone out!" someone was shouting. The villagers started to fan out.

 _This is bad!_ Yona thought. Chasing after every strike was useless, but what else could they do? Running again toward the sound, she saw torches far ahead of her, just off the village square. _Don't let them hurt him! Let us get there in time!_

Suddenly, almost too fast to see it, a flash of green streaked across the light. Torch-flames and bodies were sent flying. People screamed not in fear but in pain.

When Yona and the others got there, Yoon rushed to the nearest victim to examine their injuries. "What happened?"

A man pointed toward a cottage barely visible at the furthest reach of their torches. "I saw someone there, and then — it was so fast —"

People were flung down in one straight line, and Yona's eyes traced it from the place the man pointed to away into the dark. The spirits must have launched sideways off the wall, attacking with the force of the jump itself and vanishing from the light too quickly for archers to take aim.

They were trying to escape the light more than trying to attack, Yona thought. If they had intended to kill, they had Jae-ha's robe lined with knives ready to use, but even on the injured people, there were no stains of blood.

"Gather everyone in the square," the elder shouted in the distance. "Everyone here together in the light! Don't wander or he'll pick you off!" As the villagers regrouped, carrying their wounded, Yona and the others followed them back.

They were just arriving when another crash sounded, this one with the dry, hollow tone of wood. Almost comically, the wheel of a cart came bouncing and rolling into the square. The villagers' agitated chatter suddenly fell silent as they watched it roll, veer into a lazy circle, and ruffle itself flat like a coin.

"Are we going to stand here and let him smash everything in the village?" one of the men burst out.

"We've rebuilt it all before; we'll rebuild it all again," the elder sighed. "None of it is worth even one person's life."

Yona looked at him. The noble sentiment took her by surprise, but in the very next moment, the old man was gripping his cane and growling through his teeth. "Why do the green dragons always insist on plaguing us?"

At that, her interrupted spark of anger flared back. "You care so much about your people," she called to him. "I respect it, that you don't want to see them get hurt — but the green dragons are your people too! Being chained up like prisoners, threatened with bows — being treated like nothing but a problem — how do you think that must feel for them?"

" _What do you know about it?_ " the elder barked.

Yona's fists clenched. "Jae-ha is my friend. He's my family. He's a person who loves freedom and beauty, but even when things are ugly, he doesn't hold back. It's just when he's really hurting, he doesn't want people to see." She glared at the elder — at the whole village — with fire in her eyes. " _What do_ _ **you**_ _know about_ _ **him!?**_ "

Another blow sounded in the surrounding darkness, this time like sundering stone.

"Shin-ah!" Yona caught his arm. "You can see everything in the dark, right?"

He nodded.

"Will you take me to him?" Bringing torchlight near him would only drive him away, but maybe…

Shin-ah hesitated. If the spirits turned on Yona with Jae-ha's strength, they could kill her in an instant. But then, she had been the one who could calm the spirit when he had been the one who was possessed. He'd tried to protect her then, and she had told him, _Clear the way … I'll come for you, as many times as it takes._ For any of them, she would choose to come no matter what…

Finally he nodded again, took Yona's hand and struck out into the night.

* * *

Jae-ha was still swimming. The fleeting sense of light had returned, but with the red and orange colors of fire, and in wisps he caught the scent of smoke.

 _This can't mean anything good._

More and more, he blindly felt his body striking things, felt himself flung up against rocks or wood or who-knew-what, but worse than the battering was the exhaustion overtaking him in his own mind.

 _Dammit… I can't get myself out of this…_

But as that very thought turned in his mind, he saw it in another way and realized what it meant: not _I can't get out_ , but _I can't get out_ _ **alone**_ _._

It was the first hint of something solid to hold onto. Of course the others would be coming to help. If the ghosts knew how to use his power, they could lead quite a chase, but he knew firsthand how hard it was to keep dodging Yona for long.

The thought of having her come to his rescue wasn't bad at that. When it happened, it might come with its own problems, but the anticipation was downright pleasant; there was no reason not to savor it.

And it meant that he had to do his part. For Yona to arrive to save the day, only to find that it was too late because he'd already let himself be defeated? Intolerable. It would take much more than this before Jae-ha would leave behind such an unsightly scene.

And so he kept swimming.

* * *

Yona needed Shin-ah's help not to trip or run into walls, but she barely needed any guidance to know where Jae-ha was. Now and then she felt a presence, not constant but enough to follow, a pulsation of menace in the black, sightless void. She would feel it loom ahead of her, she would begin to hope, and then it would fly away.

For what might have been an hour, Shin-ah led her on and on through the darkness, not in a running chase but patiently stalking that presence. Again and again they heard the thundering blows and the hail and crash of debris as another structure was demolished. As time wore on they began to hear screams again — scattered, but too many to be people flushed one by one from hiding in their houses. The villagers' voices in the square were growing more agitated. Whether the elder had changed his mind or was losing control, his instruction from before couldn't hold everyone forever, and Hak and Kija and Zeno couldn't be everywhere at once…

At last, the ghosts' presence paused for a time as if to rest, and Yona and Shin-ah were able to creep up closer than ever before. Yona could sense it more clearly as they drew near. Each pulse was of angry spirits reaching out, snaking over the ground and the walls and everything within their reach. That was how they could move in the darkness; they could feel their way without light.

But as Yona and Shin-ah came still closer, there _was_ light: very dim, wavering and blood-red. A cottage nearby lay smashed; its thatch had fallen into the hearth and had just begun to burn. The next cottage was only close enough to catch the fading edge of the glow. The wall was smudged over with red, broken in a wavering black gap where the color was lifted aside into space and faintly traced a moving body.

Yona could see almost nothing, but still she recognized Jae-ha's height, the shape of his robe. His body moved strangely, curled between tension and impulse like a wounded animal.

Yona started toward him.

Shin-ah held her back with a hand on her shoulder. "If he runs…"

If he ran, they might never get this close again. If anyone got this close again, they might not be the ones to do it — and this was close enough for a sure bow-shot. This might be their only chance.

But just standing here was no help. "I have to do something!" Yona whispered. "I can't just leave him like that!"

Shin-ah's grip on her shoulder tightened, still gentle but nervous. Yona could hear his breath as he looked past her, at Jae-ha.

Shin-ah knew it, too, that he had to do something. He felt it all the more keenly. This village was different from his own, more different than he had imagined, but in one way it was still the same, and he could only imagine being pulled away from Yona and the others, back to such a difficult, friendless place. He'd had his own body taken by an angry spirit and seen it do terrible things; he'd been afraid there would be no forgiveness for letting it happen. If there was anything he could do to spare Jae-ha any of that — Yona could do more than he could, but if he could somehow make sure she had the chance…

He lifted his mask. His ever-present sense of the shapes around him opened into fullness and color. He could see everything — every blade of grass, every hill distant in the dark. Jae-ha stood out vividly.

Carefully, Shin-ah touched that fearful place inside himself where the blue dragon's power slept. Instantly it was there — _yes, let me see_ — the desire to see into the flesh. If there were spirits hiding inside his friend — _let me see them_ —

 _No._ He didn't want to look there. He forced himself to focus on the silhouette, the negative space. _Show me the air around you._

The dragon sight reached out into the empty air. Shin-ah knew it was dangerous — surely his ravening power couldn't be satisfied with that — but the air wasn't empty. He could see every microscopic drop of night dew, every speck of dust and char — he could _see_ the scents of wreckage and smoke and grass and water. He could see the air itself moving and flowing. It was fascinating beyond anything he could have hoped — but still, just outside his focus, he could see every fiber of Jae-ha's clothes, see them moving with his every breath, with the very warmth of his body, and he wanted to see deeper…

Shin-ah knew he couldn't restrain his power like this for long. Could this even work?

Jae-ha's face turned toward him; it was all Shin-ah could do not to focus in on his eyes. He started to move — _maybe their only chance_ — but he flinched from the blue dragon's gaze; it held him.

Whatever was possessing him screamed. It didn't sound like Jae-ha's voice. It hardly even sounded human.

Shin-ah gave Yona's shoulder a push forward. "Now."

She set off running.

* * *

Jae-ha knew that help was coming, but it was still a surprise when he felt a channel of blue energy flowing in loops around and around him — dark blue, but so vivid against the green-black and red-black that it almost dazzled him with its glow.

 _Shin-ah!_

He didn't know what Shin-ah was doing or how, but the energy was unmistakable. If he could reach it — if Shin-ah could see him —

The angry spirits saw it, too. They tried to move against it, but they recoiled from its power — then scattered in panic. In every direction, the blue power coiled around them to hold them back. All their chaotic currents turned back on themselves with tripled force. There was no making headway against that; Jae-ha could only brace himself to keep them from tearing him apart. The wavelike roar of their rage all around him turned to a scream, a wordless, thoughtless, inhuman sound, but he understood the meaning of it all too well: the thwarted terror of the cell door drawn shut, the rattling lock, the key clicking in the shackle.

 _Let me go!_ That had been the thought that helped him find himself, and now as it was turned back on him, he was nearly caught up in it and lost, but he remembered. This time it was Shin-ah holding him. It was Yona and the others coming for him.

 _Don't let go!_ _ **Don't let me go!**_

Suddenly, light broke in on him — not like the fleeting sense of the real sky outside, but a warm, bright energy that suffused and revealed everything, gentle yet unstoppable. It shone through the wave of spirits, illuminating each separate current. For the first time, they were no longer a single mass but individual dragons, tangled together yet each one unique.

And each one was transfixed in the light. What they felt still rang loudly through this spirit-vision, and it was another sensation Jae-ha knew very well indeed: the call of the dragon's blood.

 _Well, Yona dear, you certainly know how to make an entrance._

The spirits began to move again and make sound again. Now it was no longer an indiscriminate roar or shriek but a chorus of voices. For the first time, they spoke in words.

 _You._

 _It's you._

For a moment, Jae-ha thought that this would be enough, that the worst was past, but as the ghosts' chorus swelled, their anger returned.

— _it was you —_

— _because of you —_

— _where were you? —_

They were pushing directly against the flow of the dragon blood, but as they echoed each other and inflamed each other, Jae-ha realized that the sheer mob force of them might just break through. He knew himself how hard that was, but he had never let himself believe that it was impossible.

The power that was supposed to protect Yona was also making her a target.

— _all because of you —_

— _you never came —_

— _you think you own me? —_

— _why didn't you —_

— _how dare you! —_

The confusion of different feelings aligned in a renewal of pain and anger. The first one that moved toward Yona was enough to trigger the stampede, and the mass of them lashed out at her.

 _Yona!_ Jae-ha was still completely outnumbered, but he did have the dragon blood on his side — if only that could be enough —

* * *

When Shin-ah told her "now," Yona ran forward through the darkness, toward the scream. Her heart pounded, but there was no hesitation. As she came close, the shifting red smudges of reflected firelight resolved into a more precise image. She could see the fringe of Jae-ha's hair, the vaguely-patterned sheen of the trim on his robe and his boots. She could see his body shifting with tight, arrested movements as if struggling in some kind of restraint — Shin-ah's power wasn't paralyzing him but was somehow holding him in place. She could see that he was writhing in pain.

A pang struck Yona's heart. When Jae-ha had drunk the nadai and the others hadn't let her see him, she imagined it must have been something like this. She reached out, and one hand found his shoulder, the other found his cheek.

The screaming stopped. His face turned toward her, staring. His eyes were still vague points of dark in the darkness, just enough to see that they were wide and wild; they didn't look like Jae-ha.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm here."

A growl rose in his throat. He suddenly half-fell against the stone wall — the hold on him must have released; Shin-ah must have reached his limit. Yona held on tighter, trying to steady him; she felt every muscle tense under her touch.

Words slipped out through his strained, wordless voice: " _…you… …where… …why didn't…_ " The timbre changed with each phrase, even each word — none of it sounded like Jae-ha — but it was enough to understand. Zeno had said it was a crowd of spirits of past green dragons. They had all been locked up here to wait for the Red Dragon King — for Yona — and she had never come for them.

"I'm sorry," she said, stroking Jae-ha's face soothingly. "I'm sorry." She bent her head close so as not to miss anything they said to her.

"… _because of you… …how dare you…!_ "

Suddenly they knocked her away with a sweep of Jae-ha's arm, and his right hand struck out toward her. She dodged instantly but too late, and just before his fingers reached her, that hand jerked back with a cry of effort — and this time she knew it was Jae-ha's voice.

The firelight had grown brighter and more golden as the nearby flames grew, and she could see him more clearly as he struggled to hold that hand in check and haul it back, closer to his face — he caught it in his teeth.

"Stop it!" Yona took hold of him again by his wrist and his cheek, trying to gently coax them apart. "Stop it, all of you. Jae-ha's like you. Why would you want to hurt him?"

She heard another wordless growl; she felt the vibration of it through his cheek. She felt the muscle there tighten, and a trickle of blood ran down toward his wrist. The light had grown just strong enough to raise the black line of it into crimson.

"Stop it!" she pleaded — but she understood. The spirits did have a reason to hurt Jae-ha; he was the one she'd finally come for when they had waited and suffered in vain. She could understand that jealous resentment, but she couldn't bear it. She couldn't let them do that to him.

Not only that, but she began to hear voices and footsteps, too many to just be Hak and the others. More light — torchlight — was coming closer. The fire and the screams had brought everyone this way, and with the villagers coming, she had to do something quickly.

She could only think of one thing.

She hugged Jae-ha close and whispered in his ear. "Listen, everybody. Jae-ha didn't ask for this, any more than you did. It's not his fault. So please, don't hurt him or make him do things he'll regret." She took a deep breath to steel her resolve. "The one you're angry at is me."

Jae-ha's body froze and relaxed a little — dangerously, but it was enough. She was able to ease his jaws open and lift his bleeding hand away. She again felt that menacing presence in the air, different now than before, but still it was the spirits reaching out from Jae-ha's body. The only thing she could think to do — the only chance she knew to take — and it was beginning to work.

"I'm the one who never came for you," she whispered. She didn't remember it or know why, but she knew that it was true. "If you need someone to take it out on, take it out on me." The menace in the air grew stronger.

"Miss!" It was Zeno's voice.

Yona looked over her shoulder. The others were there now — everyone but Yoon; he must still be tending injuries somewhere. Hak and Kija were trying to hold the villagers back. Zeno was farther away, beside Shin-ah — who was frozen in place where she had left him, struggling to move but caught in the backlash of his own power. He saw what was about to happen. Zeno saw it.

Hak glanced over his shoulder at her, and whether he saw it or not he understood. "Princess!"

 _I'm sorry._ She turned back to Jae-ha.

His own voice broke through again. " _Don't be stupid!_ "

 _I'm sorry, everyone._ But this way was better. Her body couldn't fly away and be lost for good, the villagers had never pointed their arrows at her…

She felt chills on her skin where the spirits surrounded her, trying to find their way in, but maybe the dragon blood was holding them back. It was up to her to open the door for them.

"It's all right," she whispered. "All of you. Come to me."

In the next instant, Yona felt herself — not her body, her _self_ — pierced as if with uncountable blades. She tried to cry out, but she couldn't hear it — she didn't know if it had reached her throat, a chaos of voices roared around her —

And then she fell away into darkness.

* * *

The world returned to Jae-ha as suddenly as a flash of lightning revealing clouds in the night, but this flash didn't end. Before he could tell where his body was or where the ground was, he nearly fell, but he felt Yona slump against him — she was falling too. He seized her in his arms and instinctively caught himself in a half-crouch. He caught Yona from below, but he did catch her, before even her knees touched the ground. Her head fell onto his shoulder, her face into the angle of his neck. Around the edge of his collar he felt the alternating warm and cool of her breath.

Only then did he look to see where he was. It was pitch-black night, and he stood in a wash of firelight and torchlight. He was beside the wall of a cottage, and the very style of the stonework and thatch triggered a chill of recognition even before he looked out between his friends' backs and saw the crowd of people with their familiar clothing and half-familiar faces.

Fear surged inside him — the click in the shackle — telling him to jump, to escape. Then came an answering surge of pride that couldn't bear to show fear, not to _them_. Pulled one way, then the other, it took him a moment to collect himself and fashion the feeling into a mental remark.

 _Well then, this is 'the worst that could happen.' If anyone asks me that question after this, I will know what to tell them, because I will have seen it._

Yona tensed in his arms. She gasped, and the sudden draw of air felt cold against his neck.

Instantly he realized that he was mistaken. Things could still get immeasurably worse.

 **Chapter 2 - END**


	3. Yona's Chains

When Yona came to herself, she was in a small place, open yet confined like a bubble. The ghosts were all around her, weaving together among each other, forming an impenetrable shell.

She felt at once tiny, surrounded by them, but also expansive, as if her self were the entire landscape where this was all happening, stretching far beyond what she could see. Her thoughts and voice were the small, cornered piece of her, and the whole of her was much larger, but with her consciousness hemmed in like this, what could she do?

She'd gotten herself into this. Back in the real world, Hak and Jae-ha and the others must be going crazy with worry. This had been the best option, but stopping here wasn't enough. Now that she was here, she had to do something.

"Hello?" she said, experimentally.

The ghosts made a jumbled response — snarls, sneers. One gave her a nudge that didn't feel too aggressive, and that encouraged her. After all, these weren't monsters. If things had been only a little different, they would have been family to her, like Jae-ha and the others.

"I want to help you," she said.

Another rumble, and she strained to hear its individual tones:

— _come here and say that_ _ **now?**_ _—_

— _nobody wants to help me —_

— _can't even help herself —_

But behind the sharp blades of anger and despair, she felt hints of warming and softening. If there were a few or even one of them who wanted her help and whom she could help…

"I know you don't want it to be like this," she called. "You're not monsters — you're just hurt. I know — I know your hearts were tender enough to be hurt." That had come into her mind a bit desperately, but as she said it she felt it confirmed by the sense, again, of that elusive warmth.

"What is it that's keeping you here? What's making you hurt other people?"

— _what else can I do? —_

— _hurt them like they hurt me —_

— _You know how it feels. You feel it._

Those last words came through very clearly, and for a moment the swarm of ghost-dragons fell silent, then one by one…

 _She knows how we feel?_

 _She feels just the same._

 _The hypocrite._

 _Where did you see that?_

 _Show me._

 _ **Show her.**_

They began to move. For a moment it felt like they were closing in, reaching in, but then Yona realized that they were reaching out into that larger landscape of her self. "What are you doing?" Even as they pulled her along, she rushed forward herself, as if she could catch them and stop them from rifling through her belongings without permission — it felt exactly that rude and even more sickeningly personal as they found the place they wanted. She didn't even know what that place was — somehow she held back from letting herself know — before they seized her and pushed her in.

" _What's making you hurt other people?"_

Yona was plunged into pure sensation, and she knew the sensation — fire in her blood, steel in her muscles from her chest down to her fingertips. Why now? She tried to catch herself, reached out for anything that would make sense of the feeling.

For a moment she stood again on the ship in the waters off Awa, bow drawn, glaring down the length of an arrow at Yan Kum-ji. In another moment she would let the bolt fly, infused with fire and steel —

But before she could release the bowstring she lost hold of the moment. She was plunged in deeper. The feeling of rage was baffled and turned from power to sickness. A new feeling tightened around her — around her chest, her hands, her head — she could hardly think —

" _What is it that's keeping you here?"_

The plunge stopped so suddenly it was a blow, as if she had hit the bottom of the pit they had pushed her into — no, as if she were shackled and had hit the end of her chains.

The feeling sank in, freezing inside her as it went. She could hardly move, she didn't want to move, but she had to move. She didn't want to stay in this pain, and she knew that there was something she had to do. She made herself remember — it was the green dragon ghosts who had sent her here. _I want to help them. I can't help them if I give up this easily. And Hak and the others —_ if she didn't try to get out of this, she would just be leaving them to suffer. _I want to do my part and protect them. I still want to see more of my country and what I can do for its people._

 _I have to move!_

She reached out. It hurt as though she really had frozen solid and her arms and fingers cracked and shattered as they flexed. The vision of cold made her numb. She found something to hold onto and orient herself, but she couldn't feel it. She could only pull herself blindly toward it, knowing that when she reached it she would know where she was…

She pulled the anchor to her. It touched her face.

It was the handle of a sword.

The pommel touched one of her cheeks; the other cheek rested against a warm, cloth-wrapped body. Sunlight filtered in through a sheet of pale cloth, a thin cloak draped over her, but then the cloak lifted away. Morning light poured in. She felt that warm body move against her, felt the resonance of the voice inside it.

The impossible blessing.

The blackest curse.

"Yona?" Soo-won asked.

She screamed. Soo-won jumped back in shock as she scrambled away from him, back against the wall of the street in Awa.

 _Not now, not now, there are things I have to do, I can't do this now_ , she pleaded in her mind. She tried to get away, to grab hold of something else, but everywhere she turned, there he was. He was giving her the hairpin. He was lying beside her and holding her hand. He was standing over her father's dead body, holding the bloody sword.

At that she froze and stepped back warily, keeping her eyes on the blade. She hadn't learned enough yet to take on an opponent like Soo-won, and she knew that this time, no one was coming. If he came at her now…

But the sword fell to the floor with a ringing clatter of steel. Soo-won only stared at her — not with the alien look of hate she remembered from that night, but with a look of surprise, even concern.

"Yona," he said, "I can't hurt you. This is just a dream."

She blinked at him. It was a cool, totally unexpected splash of practicality, and it gave her a strange sensation, as if Soo-won had picked the room up like a toy and turned it around. When he put it down again they were back on the street in Awa. She was still backed up against the wall.

Soo-won was looking all around, at the walls, at the air, as though there were something more to see in a sphere all around them. Yona managed to take her eyes off him and follow his gaze, and there hidden in plain sight was the teeming shell of intertwined ghost dragons. Those weren't bricks against her back, they were scales.

She jumped away from them and turned back in apology. "Sorry, sorry! I didn't mean to sit on you!"

She sensed a grumble, maybe a snicker.

"These are dragons?" Soo-won questioned.

"They're just people. But they're dragons too." She wasn't sure how to explain, or if she even should. "They're ghosts right now. I think they look like this because they're upset. I don't even know how many of them there are."

"I counted twenty-one," Soo-won said.

 _How did he do that?_ she wondered. Could anyone count a barrel full of snakes? If anyone could, it would be Soo-won, but still she glanced back incredulously —

— And flinched away from the sight of him. As a threat, she'd been able to fix her eyes on him, but now he was something else, and she couldn't bear to look. She was stuck here with him; that much was clear. But why? The shock had swept her mind blank at first, but now she began to remember just how she'd gotten here.

"They brought me here," she recalled aloud. "They said I felt just like they did."

"In what way?"

"Like how they're lashing out at people, but I don't…" She recalled the other flash, when she'd tried to catch herself as they pushed her in. "Oh, that's why I remembered that."

"What did you remember?"

"The time in Awa, when I shot Yan Kum-ji. I did want to hurt him after everything —"

"Wait, Yona, _you_ shot him?" Soo-won asked.

She nodded. She still didn't turn toward him. He leaned forward to catch her eye, and she managed enough of a glance to see him staring at her before she turned away again.

"Maybe I shouldn't be surprised," he said.

"But I still don't understand. I _did_ want to hurt him because of everything he'd done to the people in Awa, and Yoon got beaten up, and he was trying to kill Jae-ha —"

It struck her suddenly that the rage she'd felt then was about power, about making that moment go her way, not his. The fire and steel and the arrow's flight were all to say _**I choose**_ — and it didn't match. The problem for the ghosts was that they _weren't_ choosing. Even the attack on the village had been a release of formless rage with no decisive intent, just bruises and fractures and broken property. They couldn't move on, but she'd moved on long since.

"I wouldn't turn into a ghost over that, though. I mean, I feel…" She felt Soo-won coming up beside her shoulder, uncomfortably close, but she pressed on. "I feel… like I should apologize to my father, but other than that I'm not sorry. But I'm not really happy either. Or I'm happy that I stopped him from hurting people, but I'm not happy that I hurt him. I don't hope he's being punished in the next world, although I wouldn't be sorry about that either…" Yona finally gave up. The meaning she was aiming for was too tiny a target, and she'd landed enough shots surrounding it to basically understand it…

"So as a person in himself, he means nothing to you — no attachment one way or another." And Soo-won hit the bulls-eye in one shot. Naturally.

"Yeah, like that," she admitted.

So in that way, she wasn't like the ghosts. Or she was only like them in that she could want to hurt someone. The similarity was so superficial — but then she realized that _of course_ it was superficial. When the ghosts had found the place where she felt the way they did and pushed her into it, that had been the first image she could grasp, long before she reached the bottom.

And at the bottom…

Yona's hands flew to her mouth. She'd been trying so hard to avoid the obvious, but _of course_ — at the bottom was where she was _now_. The place where she and the ghosts were just alike was right here.

In this place.

With this person.

Her blood went cold all over again. Dream or no dream, there was no escaping it. She couldn't avoid it or she would just be giving up and not helping anyone. Reaching out blindly in freezing darkness was easier…

"Yona?" Soo-won's hand touched her shoulder.

She jerked away from him, but she couldn't avoid him. She tried to turn toward him, but doing it doubled her over; she couldn't help bending over to avoid seeing him. There was no way forward except through him, or with him. There was no way forward at all.

"It's you," she breathed the words out raggedly through her fingers.

"Yes, it's me," he sighed, as if he understood just what a burden his presence was.

But he didn't understand what she'd meant. "How I'm just like them, like the ghosts. How I can't move on, but I have to move on, but I can't…" How she'd thought, looking down at the capital from the mountains, that she was stuck in that middle place… "It's you."

Now the match was terribly perfect. For Yan Kum-ji, she would never have become a ghost, but what if Hak hadn't come that night, or had come too late? What if Soo-won had killed her along with her father? It was all too easy to imagine the ghost of a red-haired princess wandering the castle forever, frightening people with her anguished cries. And if that ghost had gotten a chance to vent her feelings on Soo-won, decisive killing intent would probably have been beyond her, but bruises and fractures and smashing anything that was his would have offered tempting illusions of satisfaction. She hoped she would have drawn the line at possessing someone and getting them hurt or killed for the sake of her own temper tantrum, but when she thought of the princess she'd been — the world she'd seen then was so small, and her own self had seemed so large within it — she wasn't as sure as she would have liked to be.

 _Hypocrite._ The accusation echoed in her mind. How could she tell the green dragon spirits to free themselves, when she was this trapped?

Soo-won bent down to her level. He didn't try to touch her again, just leaned closer to her line of sight. "I don't want to keep you from moving on," he said. "It's all right if you need to hate me."

"I **do** hate you!" The words burst out, and they shocked her. She jolted up straight and looked at him at last — looked down at him for a moment, before he straightened up as well. This time she managed to meet his gaze and hold it, even though she was trembling. His eyes were wide; despite his own invitation, he almost looked hurt.

 _I do hate you._ It was irresistibly true. She had loved him, and he had betrayed her and everything else she loved. He had killed her father, killed Min-soo, made Hak bear the blame for capital treason, made the entire Wind Tribe suffer — how could she not hate him? How could she let go of hating him? That wasn't a solution, it was the problem!

But shouting at him _I do hate you_ had shocked her because it was also painfully wrong. His expression softened, and he seemed to understand even without her saying anything that it wasn't how she really felt, or was a very incomplete picture.

Hating him was the problem, but it was only half the problem. The other half was something she felt but couldn't put into words.

The words wouldn't come, but she knew the feeling, and she had something to attach it to.

She lowered her hands at last and looked down at her shoes. "I still have the… the present you gave me." The word "birthday" was too difficult, so she dodged it. "I lost it once, but I couldn't let it go, and I went and looked for it. I tried to throw it away, but…"

"You should throw it away," Soo-won said. "It was too selfish for a gift."

Yona looked up at him, but this time he was the one who averted his face from her.

"I knew that after that night, there could be nothing between us," he explained. "Before that, I wanted to see you smiling and feeling beautiful. I told you it was a gift when it was really a self-indulgent 'goodbye'."

Even as he accused himself, Yona couldn't let go of the words, _I wanted to see you smiling and feeling beautiful_. They caught in her chest and fluttered there, unable to escape.

"Of course," he continued, "I had hoped that you would sleep through the night and never know, but even then… Some of my party said that if that happened, I should marry you —"

The words gave Yona a jolt.

"— But it would have been a sham, built on lies. I had too many ways to justify my rule to treat you so disgracefully."

The obvious disjointure pricked her to a moment of pique. "So it would have been too mean to marry me, but you were okay with killing me," she pointed out. "Men are so weird."

"Oh, I'm more twisted than most, don't blame everybody else!" He laughed, waving his hands in an empty show of self-defense and flashing that disarming smile of his.

"Still, though…" He turned his face again and gazed off into some invisible distance. "It is nice to meet you like this, in a dream where I can say these things."

His sea-green eyes, looking out under softly-lowered lashes… His smooth hair, the color of peach jade, sweeping across his cheek… His disarming smile — she knew it was an illusion, but she still wanted to believe there was truth in it, deep down…

The flutter in her chest returned, so strongly it was almost unbearable. After everything he'd done, she should hate him — and she did hate him. After all of that, she shouldn't feel anything for him like she had before.

But she did.

The other half of the problem. She knew perfectly well what it was called, she just didn't want to admit it to herself, because it hurt too much to say it.

 _I still… I can't… Can I?_

Supposedly there had been someone who could do such a thing. Supposedly her own soul had done it. Ik-soo had even reminded her that that was the story of the Red Dragon King, that he had said of the humans who betrayed and nearly killed him, _I still love them_. Written in a book or recited as a legend it sounded so simple, so noble, but how must that really have felt for him when it happened? Yona felt a new surge of gratitude to the dragon gods for choosing that moment to reach in and help; she understood in a new way what a blessing that had been.

But she couldn't wait for such a rescue. Now she was the one who had to help them, and the only way to do it was to free herself from this middle place.

From the middle, there were two ways out. Both were impossible. Either promised only pain.

She let out a sound that might have been a whine or a roar, buried her face in her hands and shoved her palms back over her hair.

"I'm sorry," Soo-won said. "I'm being self-indulgent again."

"No, it's not —" She almost said _it's not your fault_ , but it was completely his fault. "I'm the one who has to do this." That was what she meant. "I have to get past this place. I can't stay trapped in the middle like this. I want to help the ghosts get free, but I can't do that if I'm trapped too, right? If I let them keep me here, Hak —"

She clapped her hands over her mouth, as if she shouldn't have said his name — but why not? It wouldn't put him in any danger to mention him in a dream. Even if it wasn't a dream, she didn't know what she could tell Soo-won that would make him more of a threat than he already was. "Hak and the others will worry about me," she finished, with a vague sense of shame as if Hak's name had revealed some problem with this dream that she couldn't identify.

"Yes, we need to get you out of here," Soo-won agreed. He looked again at the tangled shell of dragon-ghosts surrounding them, with scarcely a gap in the weave of their snakelike bodies. "But how do we get past them?"

"It's not them, it's me," Yona insisted. She stopped short of adding, _and_ _ **we**_ _don't need to get me out,_ _ **I**_ _need to get out_. "They put me here because…"

"Because, you said, I represent something you've been unable to move on from."

It wasn't really a matter of "representing," but close enough. "And to move on, I have to either totally hate you or — no —" Instantly she knew that hatred wasn't the way out of the trap — it was the trap itself. Hating him more would only be going further in.

The way out that she was trying to find would be… "I have to take what I feel for you and —" _let it go_ was too inadequate a phrase "— and I need to throw it away." _It would have to be like…_ The thought resisted connection, but she managed to force it; she would have to make Soo-won in her mind someone like Yan Kum-ji, someone who only mattered because of what he did and had done, who meant nothing to her as a person in himself. Completing the thought stung, but once she had done it and seen that path marked out, it wasn't that it would be painful to go that way — it would be absurd. She had no idea how to even begin doing such a thing. But if she didn't, that only left the other way out.

"I need to throw it away, or I need to…" Still she hesitated.

But when Soo-won spoke, he spoke with decision. "If throwing away your feelings for me can set you free from here — in any case at all, really, it would be a good idea at this point."

His dispassionate tone hit Yona like a dull, heavy blow. _Well, if you can tell me that so easily, it really must be a good idea_ — but even as she thought it, she knew it was one more sign of attachment.

"I think you're neglecting an option, though," he added.

"What's that?" She wanted more options than she had, and she indulged the hope that maybe another one would be less terrible.

But when she met Soo-won's gaze, that hope evaporated. He looked at her not unkindly, but with disheartening gravity. "Accept it," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Like in this case," he explained, "if you have feelings that you can't throw away but can't embrace, and it's painful for you, it still doesn't mean you have to stop moving forward. What if you were to say 'this pain is the price of being who I am, and I'm strong enough to endure it and still move on'?" He let out the end of his breath in a little settling sigh of resignation. "Maybe that's easy to say when it wasn't forced on you by someone else."

Yona's eyes widened as she looked at him. In one moment, the little sigh, she had seen everything. He knew she was strong enough to take that path, but he didn't want her to take it. He didn't want her to _follow him down it_. That was how he could want to see her smiling and still do what he had done, still look her in the eye and tell her she should discard him. It was painful for him to lose her — and Hak too, and she couldn't guess who or what else — but it was the price of who he chose to be: a son who would avenge his father's death, a king who would make Kouka better and stronger, a man who wouldn't hold Yona back. And so his answer was simply to pay the price, to accept the pain and endure it.

It wasn't what she wanted for him either. "That's… But that's like giving up!" she cried.

This time, he blinked at her. "Eh?"

"I can understand it, but — to act like that's the end of it, like you just have to go on like that forever — that _**is**_ giving up!"

He frowned. "And you think I shouldn't give up?"

"Of course not! We're both still alive, aren't we?"

"Unless I've died in my sleep," he said. "Which is always possible in politics…"

That idea drew his gaze away from her, and it was the first thing that really seemed to distress him. Yona knew that wasn't simply selfish — he'd told her in Awa, he had things he needed to do — but it was still annoying.

"Well, _**I'm**_ still alive," she announced defiantly, "so when you wake up, you'll know that we're both still alive, and as long as that's true, you can't give up!"

When he turned to meet her eyes again, his look nearly daunted her. He almost seemed angry. It touched the memory of that night, those hateful eyes in a bloodstained face — but she held firm. She didn't look away, and at last what she saw in him was serious intent. There was no gentleness in it, but there was respect, enough to fully accept her challenge and to challenge her in return.

"I murdered your father," he said. "You saw me holding the sword stained with his blood." He held her in that stare until the silence demanded an answer.

"You did," she said. "I saw you."

"I won't let anyone stand in the way of my vision for this kingdom, no matter whose blood I must have on my hands," he told her.

"I know you won't," she answered.

"I drove you from the castle. If you or Son Hak appear openly before me, you will be killed."

At the mention of Hak's name, Yona flinched, but she refused to surrender.

"I know," she said.

"And will you tell me that you and I can do anything better than hate or discard or endure each other? That such a thing is not only conceivable, but worthy of consideration?"

The challenge was issued in full. The path was laid out before her, terrible and painful and ugly, yet also clear and bright. In that moment, Yona knew that her choice was clear — and maybe she had always known. Maybe that was why she had spent so long turning her face away from it, because she had always known that it was hers to face it in the end.

And now there was no more turning away. She looked into Soo-won's eyes with as much gravity, as much fierce respect as he was showing her.

With fire and with steel.

And with love.

"Yes," she answered.

His eyes went wide. The word had struck home, but a word was not enough. She took a step toward him.

It felt terrible — sickening and shameful. It felt like treading on her father's corpse, but she knew that this was her path. _Father, forgive me, but I have to honor my own heart. I believe you would want me to do that._ Even if he wouldn't have wanted it, she would still have to do it.

She took another step, treading on Min-soo's grave, treading on the Wind Tribe's kindness.

Soo-won recoiled from her a little, but he caught himself and stood firm. She was close to him now. If they reached out to each other, their fingers could touch.

Yona took another step, treading on — what? She paused, not stopping but only pausing to try to understand.

"Are you having second thoughts?" Soo-won asked.

"No," she said. "It just feels like… Like there's something else I should do before this, or something I should say to someone."

He nodded sagely. "I'd say that's both fair and wise."

How he could make a judgment on such vague hints, she didn't know, but he seemed as definitive as if she'd handed him a plan with a name written on it. Indeed she had a sense she'd done just that, unknowingly.

"This is just a dream, though," she remembered. "So it will be okay, even if I go forward now."

She took one last step. She was close enough to feel the warmth of his body.

"Yona…" Soo-won lifted his hands toward her.

Immediately she swatted them away. "Don't touch me." Even in that, she wasn't turning back or stopping.

 _I am the one who has to do this._

Still looking into his eyes, she reached up, put her hands on his shoulders, and he let her draw him down to her until she could hold him cheek to cheek and wrap her arms around his neck. She felt the velvet of his skin, the silk of his hair, the tickle of his breath…

She felt him start to return the embrace.

"I said don't."

His shoulders lifted back against her arms and settled; he was clasping his hands behind his back.

Yona held him, feeling everything.

Sickening guilt. Corpses under her feet.

Cold fear. She half-expected to be pierced with a blade at any moment — but in a dream, she could brave that. And if she wouldn't brave it in reality, it was not because her heart was too weak to go forward, but because he had created the barrier by choosing to threaten her.

Burning anger. It drew up tight in her hand, and her fingers curled, digging into his shoulder. She wanted to hurt him and not hurt him. She wanted him to feel pain — she wanted to give him a piece of her pain — but she still wished him safe from real harm.

"Is this how it would be for us, from now on?" he asked.

"No," she said. "Not forever." Because she felt something else too, as strong as the guilt and fear and anger, and even stronger yet. She felt a desperate wish that this could be real, that she would never have to let him go.

Just as she asked, he didn't move to touch her, but where she touched him, he didn't simply endure it. He inclined his head against her, very slightly. She felt his lashes brush against her skin as he closed his eyes, felt them quiver with the tension of life in his face. His breath flowed deep and slow. With such tiny gestures, the fortress walls around her heart shook. She almost couldn't bear to cause him pain; she almost needed his arms around her. The barriers held, but if only this could be real, she knew that they would soon begin to crack.

"If somehow we could, when it wasn't a dream," she told him, "if we could get to something like this… It would be hard, and it would hurt, but I'm sure that little by little…"

He sighed, softly and with a dry hint of laughter. "Yona… You are merciless."

"You deserve it," she said, in full embrace of the double meaning: _You don't deserve my mercy. You deserve love._

"If we were as free in the world as we are in a dream…" he mused.

She laughed once into his shoulder, half-bitterly. "When you show up in my dreams, you're not usually this nice."

"No, I can see where I wouldn't be."

She barely heard him. With her own words, she realized that even in dreams this chance would never come again.

She turned her face toward his.

— guilt, anger, pain —

She had thought of his cheek, but even as she turned toward him, he turned toward her — only curious, not intending to take it from her, but there it was:

— _one chance —_

— _I wish —_

Her lips touched his.

Suddenly, something slammed into Yona with enough force to throw her back and tear the two of them away from each other. She reached out to catch herself or struggle — and she felt scales.

The green dragon ghosts. Their howling rose in her ears again. Seeing her step forward while they were still trapped only drove them into a greater paroxysm. They closed in, teeming around her, and she reached for anything to hold onto.

Something caught her hand. She felt no teeth or claws there, but warmth. As she adjusted to the resurgent roar of tangled, anguished voices, threaded among them she heard her own name.

"Yona!"

She struggled toward that voice and that hold until she could see — it was Soo-won. The ghosts were dragging her away from him, and he had caught her and was holding her. Fear struck her; she forgot that this was a vision and not real. _If they pull him in too—!_ "Soo-won, let go!"

"What's happening!? Where are they taking you!?" he called.

"Listen, this is something I have to do!" — and she saw the way to break his hold. She met his gaze again. "You have things to do, too — you can't risk yourself for this! Isn't that right?"

He understood, with a nod of grim acceptance. He squeezed her hand — a squeeze when he was already gripping hard enough to hold her — reassurance and pain — and then he let go.

Instantly there was nothing but the dragon ghosts all around her, writhing, clawing, biting, crying. Before, she had thought, _I can't free them from the trap if I'm in the same trap, too_. Now she had found her way out, but that made it harder than ever, because now she knew the trap for what it was.

A special kind of rage and pain, the kind that could bind someone's very soul in unbreakable chains, hold them for a thousand years and never let them go:

This was hatred forged in the pyre of murdered love.

Their claws and teeth didn't cut deep; they were bearable, but Yona's eyes burned with tears. She knew now how she and the ghosts felt just the same. "You loved them," she lamented. "You wanted them to love you."

And all around her came the discordant chorus of twenty-one different different answers.

— _nobody loved me —_

— _why would I want something stupid like that!? —_

— _Mama — Mama! —_

She had focused — had needed to focus — so fully on her own trap, not theirs, what could she offer them now?

' _We're both still alive, aren't we?'_ Her own voice echoed cruelly in her mind. For the ghosts, there was no comfort there.

Even the bright, clear choice, to embrace love despite betrayal and ugliness and pain — it was one thing to know, _This is the path that honors my own heart_. It was quite another thing to tell someone else, _This is what you must do_. It would be unforgivable presumption. Among this tangle of unique souls, she was sure there was one and more than one whose heart-path would be, _Let these feelings go, let this bond be broken, let the ones who hurt me become nothing to me._

And she still had no idea how to do that.

 **Chapter 3 - END**


	4. Walking, Laughing

Jae-ha still stood half-crouched in the same spot, still clinging to Yona's limp body and holding her up. Mere moments had passed this way, but already an airy feeling of paralysis began to grip his muscles.

"Jae-ha, is it you?" Kija called.

He tried to answer but found that he had no breath — _still drowning_ — and he had to pull in enough air to speak out. "Somehow, it's me."

"And the princess!?" Hak shouted.

"Breathing."

 _Which puts her ahead of me_ , he thought, but that very fact helped him recognize that paralyzing feeling. It was his body seizing up from sheer nerves. _Well, it's been a long time, hasn't it?_ It had been a long time since he felt it, but he still remembered the old lesson: breathe in deep, blow it out slowly…

Zeno was covering Shin-ah. "Blue Dragon, can you move yet?"

Shin-ah flexed experimentally and nodded, and they came to join the others in a tighter formation. Now there was only one point they all had to guard: Jae-ha and Yona.

Jae-ha knew that they — that _he_ — had to get Yona somewhere safe. Nothing else mattered by comparison. And this village was definitely not safe. From the sound of the villagers' grumbling, they might have to fight their way out.

He felt himself refuse. He didn't want to attack these people, and he would be damned if he let them attack him. He didn't want to talk to them or listen to them or even look them in the eye.

But he had to put that aside. Next to Yona, none of it mattered. He only had to think of the best thing to do for her.

The first thing he realized was that he would be no use in a fight right now anyway. His muscles were bruised and weary; his ancestors had been very rude, handling borrowed property like that. That vision of an endless night swim through riptides of anguish had left its own form of exhaustion. And he was still breathing intentionally, trying to coax his own body from the brink of self-inflicted collapse. He almost wished that he _could_ fight his way out — getting into a good fight right now would be one way to shake it off and feel better, but a fight here would be the furthest thing from good, and he didn't have the strength for it.

He did have strength for one thing.

Finally, carefully, he straightened himself and stood, lifting Yona up in his arms. Her weight was more of a burden than it would normally have been, especially carrying her in such a demanding position, but it was manageable. His body could bear carrying her like a princess more easily than his aesthetic sensibilities could bear slinging her over his shoulders.

Jumping would get her away from here faster, but he couldn't be sure of his landing in the dark. If one of the villagers shot an arrow at them from below, Hak and the other dragons would have no way to block it.

He took another deep breath to announce his decision:

"Listen. I'm just going to start walking."

Hak and the other dragons gave answering nods all around him and readied themselves to move as a floating shield around the two of them.

Jae-ha took a step forward.

* * *

Yona tried to sort through the tangle of ghosts teeming around her, tried to follow each of their voices and find and reach the ones who she might be able to help.

One quiet voice echoed, a young man repeating _I loved him… I loved him…_ as though it were a revelation. When Yona traced that voice and reached out toward it, she felt not scales but warmth. For a moment it was solid, then the gentle heat enveloped her fingers like the steam off a teacup, and then it vanished into a luminous absence and silence. For one of them, seeing through the hatred to the love was enough to set them free.

Another threaded their way through the swarm to reach Yona and wrap themself around her. She could feel the scales melting as it touched her, the serpentine coil turning to small, enfolding arms as the voice of a very young boy whispered in her ear.

 _They can really love you and still decide to hurt you?_

"Yes," Yona answered. An hour ago — or maybe it was a day or a minute ago — she couldn't have answered that for herself, but now she knew.

 _It doesn't mean they didn't love you? It doesn't mean you did something bad to make them hate you?_

"No," she said, with tears of sudden understanding. "I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong."

Again, warmth and light flowed over her like mist and vanished, free and expansive as air.

But there were so many more of them, and every one different. Yona knew that her answers would not serve for all of them, probably not for more than a few. What she could do wasn't enough. She needed help.

In snatches, through fleeting gaps in the swarm, she could see orange light — torchlight. The world outside was that way. The others were there. She struggled toward them, tried to climb up through the ever-moving, ever-changing snarl of spirits around her, and she found that she had more than the light to guide her. There were voices that way, different from the ghosts, familiar voices that gave her a new swell of courage…

* * *

Jae-ha could only focus on one step at a time at first. The dragon leg held up strongly — of course it did — but his human leg was shaky, and he was determined not to let it show. Managing that, and breath, and balance, especially as Yona started to shift in his arms and he had to adjust his hold on her with his right hand throbbing and slick with blood… It was as much as he could do.

Kija had taken the point in front, typically.

"Hey, White Snake," Hak called from the left side, "don't get carried away and leave the rest of us behind."

"As if I would leave my master and my fellow dragons behind!" And indeed he set a slow, determined pace, radiating fierce dignity with each step. He hardly looked back to check that Jae-ha was keeping up, instead tracking his steps by sound and by the sense of his presence.

This was the pace that Jae-ha could keep, but it made the village gates seem very far away. Still, he had just proved amid a torrent of angry ghosts how far his endurance could stretch, and with a finite goal, surely he could do it.

One step after another…

It was already becoming routine enough to spare a thought for other things. He looked out from the circle at the villagers, not wanting to make eye contact but needing to be alert for threats. To his surprise, he didn't see any. The arrows that would surely have been aimed at him if he'd come here alone remained in their quivers. The villagers were making way for them, particularly staying away from Hak and Kija. As the group moved further forward and the crowd closed fully around them, Jae-ha could hear occasional waves of murmuring from the back, but he couldn't turn.

"I can't see behind me," he said aloud.

Zeno came closer on the right to answer him. Jae-ha could hardly see him past Yona but could hear his steps and his voice. "Blue Dragon's back there. He hasn't even drawn his sword. They're all scared of his mask."

Amid the effort of walking, Jae-ha managed to carve out space for a smile of amusement. They should be much more frightened of Shin-ah taking the mask off.

"Yeah, I'm not as scary-looking as the others," Zeno announced to some villagers who were coming a bit close on his side. "I guess you could shoot me if you want to see what happens."

"Please don't; it looks awful when you do that," Jae-ha told him.

Although the words weren't intended for them, the villagers took the hint and backed off.

Yona shifted again and moved her arms. Jae-ha found that his footing had become more certain, as he managed to keep her in balance without missing a step. Muscles burned and bones ached — his left leg, his arms, his back — but he knew he could endure it as long as he had to.

He was that much more sure of it as Yona, slowly and clumsily as if she were doing it in her sleep, wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

"Don't worry, Yona dear," he told her.

* * *

Yona struggled toward the light and the voices. The spirits were constantly upsetting her progress or trying to pull her back, but little by little she got closer.

— _You think we're done with you? —_

— _Don't go! Don't leave us! —_

"I can't help you all by myself! I have to get help!" she answered.

She climbed close enough to the world to feel that help was there — someone was there. She felt a warm body, arms around her, and she climbed close enough to take hold of them with her arms around their shoulders — a man's shoulders.

 _Hak?_ she wondered. No, these shoulders were narrower than his, but still strong…

She was close enough that she felt — as she had with Soo-won — the voice resonating inside the body as words washed over her from that place of light:

" _Don't worry, Yona dear."_

 _Jae-ha!_ After everything he'd been through, he was the one carrying her. She could even feel the place where his right hand held her and his blood soaked through her dress.

The ghosts stirred at the recognition.

— _it's him, from before —_

— _you like him better —_

— _it's one of us! —_

They crowded forward.

"No!" Yona cried. She turned to hold them back. "Leave him alone! Stay here with me — don't hurt him anymore!"

— _let me look —_

— _I want to see —_

* * *

They had reached the square. The gate was in sight, but now the entire population of the village surrounded them. The crowd still parted to let them pass, but the people showed more resistance; the grumbling had grown louder. The villagers had begun to realize that if they were going to do or say anything, this was their last chance.

The pain in Jae-ha's muscles had burnt through to ash. He could barely feel his human leg, but it still held him; it still followed the now-automatic pattern, one step after another. It wasn't as if he had never been this exhausted before and kept on. He knew he could continue, but if he halted and had to start again…

Some of the village men gathered in front of them as if to block their way.

"Do not stop," Jae-ha told Kija.

"Just as you say."

One of the men shouted at them, "After what you've done, you think you can just walk out of here?"

"Do you intend to stop us?" Kija brandished his claw with a flourish of power that swelled it to three times its size. The men backed off in a startled ripple before him.

"Let them go," the village elder called out. "It's not worth risking your lives."

Jae-ha recognized the voice as the same old man who'd been village elder when he left. For once he was being sensible, but the words were still galling — as if any green dragon was a useless bother, something not worth the slightest unnecessary effort.

"But the rule!" someone was saying.

"The rule says the Red Dragon King can take him away."

"— the red dragon —?"

"— red hair —"

"— just a girl —"

Jae-ha smiled. They knew nothing about Yona.

"— if someone follows them and finds us —"

"We have to move as it is," the elder said. "It's all we can do."

The village gate was close now. The villagers were making way, but they were still shouting.

"Look at Jae-ha, he's not even looking at us!"

His smile twisted sourly. _Why couldn't these people have forgotten my name?_

Someone yelled at him, " _— After all the years we fed you!_ "

Instantly, his mind went blank with white-hot rage. Whoever had said that, he was seized with a charging impulse to find them and to hurt them very badly — but his legs kept the pattern, one step after another, and carried him forward until he mastered the feeling.

Breathe in deep, blow it out slowly… It had been a long time since he felt _that_ either. He didn't remember handling it this well before.

* * *

Yona stood suspended, half-conscious, half in a vision, between the two agitated crowds — the villagers on one side, the dragon ghosts on the other. The ghosts had mostly fallen silent, some just watching intently, some quivering with rage or fear — they saw these as the people who had hurt them, as if those people's words were coming in from the distance beyond the light.

"…not worth risking your lives…"

… _not worth it, I'm not worth it…_

Yona found that voice, pulled that dragon to her and held them.

But the crowd of them was calmer. Before, when they were possessing Jae-ha, in a situation like this they would have been overcome by their feelings and lashed out, but now, even the most distressed ones weren't attacking or trying to possess Jae-ha again.

Instead, they were watching him.

Yona watched him, too, as he walked through that other crowd. For him, these people weren't just echoes of their predecessors; these were the very ones who had bound him in chains, who had hurt him badly enough that he wanted to run from this place and never go back — or only go back for one person, Yona still didn't know who.

And yet Jae-ha didn't lash out or even raise his voice. He just held Yona and kept walking through that crowd, through the hail of their harsh words.

"… _after all the years we fed you!_ "

At that, she felt him take a sharp breath and felt his shoulders stiffen. Why that should be the blow that struck home for him, she couldn't guess, but it clearly had.

And still he kept walking.

Then Yona was certain: he had also stood in the trap, seen the ways out, and he had chosen the path that to her had been absurd: _let these feelings go; let this bond be broken_. For him, it was the bright, clear way, the way that honored his heart, but Yona was certain, too, that his way had been just as ugly and painful and terrifying as hers. He had been on that path for years, and still the tie wasn't fully severed. These people were not nothing to him. Maybe they never would be.

But Yona understood now that the strength of either choice was not purity or an end to pain. The strength was in making a place to stand and to build, little by little…

* * *

Jae-ha heard running footsteps coming up and a voice close behind him.

It was Yoon. "Hey, wait!"

"No waiting, we're leaving," Hak told him. "You ready to go?"

"There are still injuries, but— This isn't such a friendly place you can go off and leave me here!"

Kija motioned to Zeno, who nodded and helped himself to one of the standing torches before taking over the position in front.

"Don't worry," Kija said as he fell back, out of formation. "I'll stay and be Yoon's bodyguard. Besides, I still have things I want to say before I leave this place."

It took Jae-ha a moment to grasp the implications. When he did, he was stunned, resisted for a moment — and then burst out laughing so hard that he nearly fell over. " **Are you trying to embarrass me!?** " he laughed, loud enough for half the square to hear him. " **I can never show my face here again!** " That bridge had burned long since, but Kija taking it upon himself to smash the cinders was such a good touch that even pain and exhaustion couldn't weigh down the hilarity of it.

Jae-ha walked out through the gate of Green Dragon Village that way, carrying Yona and laughing until tears of mirth ran down his cheeks.

* * *

A place to stand, a place to build…

As Yona watched, she thought, _This is what we're building_. Laughter, friendship, a kind of strength that none of them could ever have alone…

The surrounding orange firelight fell away behind, with only one torch wavering ahead, leading the way. Around that one light, darkness swallowed them, but it hardly even seemed like darkness in its cool, intense brilliance. It felt like being embraced, and yet it also felt like being set free.

One of the ghosts marveled at Jae-ha as he carried them all out into the night. That one took on the shape of a plump young woman and began to fade. _You can just walk away. They can't chain me up anymore. I can just walk away…_

Another was fading too, turning into a smaller girl. _There's a whole world out here. There's a whole other world. I can go and see it all…_

But there were more.

— _nobody helped me —_

— _I couldn't do it, I can't do it —_

— _it's not fair, why not me —_

And still more.

— _you finally came, don't leave me again —_

— _you like me, right? you wish it had been me —_

— _stay with us! —_

"I can't!" Yona cried. She didn't want to hurt them or abandon them, but she couldn't give herself to them. She had her own people she had to return to and a life she had to live. She couldn't even tell them, _I wish it had been you_ , because she could never wish that it hadn't been Jae-ha, but she did wish… "I wish I could have been there for all of you. I don't know why I couldn't. If I could have, I'm sure I would… I'm sure I wanted to…"

She was still clutching one of them, the one who had muttered, _I'm not worth it, I can't do it_ , and now they curled closer to her.

 _You wanted to come — for me? You didn't stay away because I wasn't good enough?_

"I know I wanted to. It hurts so much — I know it hurt so much that I couldn't."

For a moment it was a man she was holding, a man older than Jae-ha. For a moment he was crying on her shoulder, and then he was gone.

A few of the ghosts, and a few more, needed something that simple, just a key to unlock their shackles. But others needed so much more. They needed that place to stand; they needed to build.

They needed time, more time than Yona had to give.

* * *

Jae-ha kept walking, following Zeno and the torch, until the village was out of sight. He felt as if he were floating along weightlessly; even his arms seemed to bear Yona's weight as invincibly as the arms of a statue, as if he could keep walking and carrying her forever.

He knew that the feeling was an illusion. He was actually near his limit, but deciding when to stop and balancing himself as he halted would also be an effort, one he was too tired to commit to. So he kept floating along, following the pool of torchlight that traced Zeno's hair and shoulders and glinted on his medallion, brushed dimly over blades of grass, now and then hung ghostly in the air among the boughs and leaves of each lone tree…

Ghostly…

Another shape loomed up from the dark, and Jae-ha looked straight at it for a moment before recognition materialized: what the torchlight was tracing out ahead of him was not a tree. It was a person.

He checked himself and halted at last. Zeno stopped too and turned back to face him, but not to see why he'd stopped or if he was all right. The yellow dragon was smiling, a broad smile but with a strange depth in the eyes; in the pale torchlight it made him look like a messenger from another world. He stepped aside, intentionally making way for Jae-ha and the mysterious figure to look at each other.

It was a man dressed in archaic clothes, with long hair tied high on his head behind a short, unruly fringe of forelocks. As they stood face to face, the man's eyes opened wide and his mouth hung slack, like someone stunned by a gift they didn't expect and weren't certain they deserved.

That stunned gaze lowered slightly, to where Yona was still curled in Jae-ha's arms and clinging to his shoulders. The man's brow softened, his lips spread into a blissful smile showing oddly sharp teeth…

"Droopy Eyes, you okay?"

Jae-ha startled toward Hak's voice, caught himself and turned back — and the figure on the path was gone. "I… for a moment… I was seeing things."

"Don't worry, Green Dragon," Zeno told him, still with that strange witch-smile. "It's all right."

* * *

Yona still clung on among the crowding ghosts, knowing she had to get free of them but not knowing how, wishing there was something better to be done.

— _why do you want to leave us? —_

— _you're just like them, I knew it, nobody —_

— _not fair —_

— _don't go —_

"I'm sorry," she told them. "There are things I have to do. I wish I could have been here for all of you. I wish I could be here —"

A new voice broke over them: " _ **I'm**_ _here._ " The presence shone with light and warmth like breaking dawn — no, like coming home in the night and the door opening for you, the hearth waiting for you. " _I've always been here, if you'd stop and listen for one damn minute!_ "

The fierce love in that voice made her think a little of Hak. It filled her with warmth and trust as though she'd known this person all along, like Zeno. And there was something about it too, not a detail of resemblance but some quality like a color that reminded her of Jae-ha.

Yona didn't need anyone to tell her who this person was.

The ghosts didn't either.

" _Come on, kids. Come here_ ," he invited them.

— _that voice —_

— _it's true —_

— _he was always there, someone was there —_

— _I'm going back with him, this is stupid —_

They began to flow toward him.

Yona relaxed into a rapture of relief and gratitude. She couldn't give the ghosts what they needed, but here was someone who could, someone who had made that their work. With him, they would have the love they needed, they would have the place and the time they needed to build their own way forward. Most of them felt it, and now they could embrace it.

As the tangle pressing around her unraveled, Yona felt one of them still gnawing at her ankle — _not fair not fair not fair —_ and their ancestor had to pry their jaws off of her.

As he wrestled with them, Yona reached out and touched his presence — warm and luminous, human but unfading. "You're… you became their saint," she said.

The first green dragon brushed it aside with a scoff. " _They're my kids, that's all. — Come on, kids, we're going home. Stop bothering the king._ "

"Thank you," she told him. She couldn't remember what he'd done for the Red Dragon King, but for loving these spirits as they needed to be loved, "Thank you… Thank you…"

She also knew that Jae-ha wouldn't exist, or she would never have met him, if it weren't for this person. " _Thank you… Thank you… Thank you…_ "

She poured it out until he couldn't take it anymore. " _Enough already! Shut up, idiot!_ "

Yona laughed, as though at an old, familiar joke.

* * *

Jae-ha had been right not to stop moving earlier. Now he couldn't start again, or even stay standing for long. "Hak? Would you care to…?"

"Right."

Hak hurried to take Yona. Shin-ah came forward and helped lift her onto his back. Jae-ha gasped as her dress pulled away from his right hand, taking clotted blood with it and reopening the feverish, lancing pain of the wound.

"Jae-ha…"

He looked up at the sound of Yona's voice and found her looking at him sleepily. Concern glistened in her eyes, but so did peace, too much of it to think that she was fighting ghosts. He smiled to see it, and then she smiled back at him.

"Princess! Are you all right?" Hak asked.

She nodded against his shoulder. "Everybody went home," she said, and closed her eyes again.

"Zeno saw, too. The ghosts all went home."

For a moment, Hak wasn't sure whether to be relieved or confused, but in the end the answer was obvious, and he relaxed as Yona settled against his back and fell asleep. He started forward, but Zeno didn't move. When they came side-by-side they both looked back.

Jae-ha realized that he'd forgotten to think about whether he could start walking again unencumbered. Before he said a word or even managed to push his exhausted mind onto the question, Shin-ah yoked himself under his left arm and took hold around his shoulders. Jae-ha leaned into the support, letting himself relax gratefully and heedlessly…

So heedlessly that he would have poked himself on a horn of Shin-ah's mask if not for a warning "P'kyuu!" from the squirrel who was perched there.

* * *

When they reached the little stand of trees where they'd left their packs, a stack of wood was already there waiting for a campfire. Yoon had assembled it that morning when he'd realized that Zeno wasn't coming back, and now that Zeno did return, he lit some tinder off his torch and got the fire going.

Jae-ha was barely staying on his feet, and when Shin-ah gently lowered him to the ground, he didn't move. The bite-wound on his hand was red and swollen. Shin-ah dug into the packs for Yoon's stash of extra medicines, but he didn't know what was what.

Hak did know at least enough to do better than nothing. "Let me," he said, and lay Yona down in the grass.

Jae-ha still didn't move or resist. His face lay in darkness, shaded from the campfire, and so twitches of pain and sounds of sharp, uneven breath were the only signs that he was even conscious as Hak scrubbed the wound, dabbed the salve, and wrapped the bandages.

While he worked, Shin-ah took bedrolls out of the packs and tucked Yona into one of them. She woke up just long enough to recognize him and smile before falling asleep again. He lay out another blanket beside Jae-ha, and when the bandages were fastened, they lifted him onto it and folded it around him. Shin-ah stayed beside him; he lay down in the grass resting his chin on his folded arms, and he pushed his mask back on his head to watch over his fellow dragon with his gold eyes.

Hak considered that to be leaving Jae-ha in good hands and went to sit beside Yona.

Zeno also concluded that things here were under control. "Listen," he said, "Zeno has something he has to go and do, but he'll be back by morning."

"Try not to hurt yourself," Hak said, by way of seeing him off.

He took the torch and went, leaving the camp silent except for the crackling of the fire — and Jae-ha. He never spoke, but now and then Hak heard him make a sound, sometimes like a chuckle and sometimes more like something else slipping through his attempts to control it.

Meanwhile Yona breathed softly and heedlessly, seeming peaceful as if she had just fallen into a well-earned sleep after a hard day of honest work.

Hak looked at her, and he spoke to her silently in his mind. _How am I supposed to be your bodyguard when you keep running ahead to places I can't follow you?_ Getting herself possessed by a mob of angry ghost-dragons was a new benchmark — but not really so new. It wasn't as if he hadn't already known things were like this.

After all, if King Il had wanted someone to shut his daughter up behind strong walls and make sure nothing ever happened to her, anyone could do that. Apparently an entire village could spend two thousand years making that mistake and proving where it led. No, to protect his daughter, the king had asked someone who knew her, and who loved her, and who had once helped her sneak out of his own castle. Not someone who wanted to hide her away and stamp out every risk, but someone who wanted to see her shine and to support her for the times when she had to take risks to live out her brilliance.

Hak knew that that was his role. Even if, on a night like this, she made it really nerve-wracking.

* * *

Zeno arrived at the green dragons' tomb only to find it empty. _Well, it's better this way_ , he thought. There was nothing to hold them here any longer. Maybe they were all in the next world by now. After all, Shuten had deserved to rest in peace long ago.

It was foolish to feel lonely, or angry at being left behind without a word. For the yellow dragon, that was only natural…

He started back toward camp, and had barely left the deep-set path leading from the cave when he saw them coming back.

"Hey, Yellow," Shuten called as he approached. "Nice of you to say goodbye before you leave."

The dragon-like spirits of his successors trailed after him like banners at a parade — even more like banners because they were no longer one wave of inky black but a procession of snaking bodies in every shade of green. One of them was still gnawing bitterly on his elbow, but he bore it patiently. Some of them were even looking human again. He carried a small boy in his arms, and a girl of around Yoon and Yona's age trailed after him, yawning and guiding herself by a handful of the back of his robe.

Zeno watched them come, feeling a foolish prickling of mist in his eyes, and he fell into step beside his old friend.

"We went down to the village to watch the show for a while," Shuten explained, grinning. "That pretty-boy white dragon was so mad! Him and all of Guen's kids hanging on behind him! A couple more of mine could rest in peace just from seeing that bunch spoiling to fight for them like that.

"The rest of mine were all worn out, though, so I had to bring them home. Even as ghosts they need a nap after too much excitement."

When they reached the tomb, most of the ghosts went back down the broken well, returning to what they knew. Some settled into corners of the hillside chamber, making the shadows there darker or at least scalier than before. Shuten settled the little boy on his lap as he sat on the lip of the ancient stones, and the girl sat on the floor and folded her arms on his knees, rested her head there and fell asleep.

"Will you be okay here now?" Zeno asked, sitting down on the floor himself.

"We'll be fine," Shuten told him. "About half of them went tonight, and the ones left here aren't in one constant fit anymore. I can talk to them." He bounced the little boy in his lap demonstratively. "I don't think he'll be here much longer — and this one —" he rubbed the girl's hair "— says she wants to stay and help me. We'll see though. She's still bitter, wanting to do what she says nobody did for her. Well, you can tell she's sore just by looking."

Zeno leaned over to look at the girl more carefully and understood all too well what Shuten meant. Her spirit still wore the image of the arrow that had presumably killed her, a fletched shaft that angled up into her back. Her sloping eyes made her look uncomfortably like Jae-ha.

He could have ended that way just as easily. There might be nothing but sheer luck separating him from the ghosts. The idea in Zeno's mind had a slippery, downward pull about it…

Shuten laughed, a merciful interruption. "I should have known that idiot would show up and stick his face right in it." He sighed and shook his head with deep affection. "I never thought I'd see him again."

The _him_ was _her_.

The Red Dragon King.

Yona.

It might just have been worth the wait to see the look on Shuten's face when he saw his king again in Jae-ha's arms…

"Ah!" Zeno cried suddenly, as the thought of the red dragon pricked his memory. "With everything that happened, I almost forgot why we came here in the first place!"

"Hm?" Shuten looked at him.

"There's a story that Red Dragon gave you his jade seal, and some rebels are looking for it."

"Hmph. They'll be looking a long time."

"Did he really give you anything like that?"

Shuten opened his mouth to respond, paused, and began again from another angle. "Do you remember his personal seal? The little tall square one? It was peach jade, and the top was carved with a dragon on each side and the fifth dragon on top."

"Oh," Zeno realized. "Wasn't that the one, that time when he was doing paperwork and you burst in—"

"I forget what it was even about."

"—And his hand came up too fast and he accidentally threw it—"

"Out the window. Into the rock garden. And of course you can't just leave that lying around…"

"I said I'd look for it," Zeno recalled.

"Because you're a glutton for punishment," Shuten confirmed. "And then Abi insisted that **I** had to go find it because it was my fault, but I still had my urgent whatever…"

"…And before the fight got too bad, Red Dragon said 'Oh, the rock garden is a good place to talk,' and next thing, I looked out the window and there you two were…"

"…Crawling around on our hands and knees sifting through gravel and talking about bridge repairs or whatever it was. I finally saw the red ink, but when I picked it up, it was just the stamp and an inch or so of stone. When it landed it broke right in two."

"Oh, and then they put that big gold handle on it!" Zeno remembered, laughing. "He never managed to throw it very far after that!"

"That's probably why all the royal seals after that were these big gold things," Shuten said, "so the idiot couldn't throw them out a window.

"Apparently he kept an eye out whenever he went for a walk in the rock garden, though. Eventually he found the other piece with the carved dragons."

"And that was what he gave you?" Zeno guessed, with sudden but gentle gravity.

Shuten nodded, then broke into a sharp-toothed grin. "Yeah, you got jewelry from Heaven, I got broken stationery."

Zeno laughed again, freely, knowing what a perfect gift it had been for all that. Long after the original emergency had been forgotten, Shuten had always laughed when he remembered that incident.

"That's a relief, though," Zeno sighed at length. Even if someone gets it, they can't use it to forge Red Dragon's name."

Shuten was silent for a moment; his smile fell away. "The words you want are 'couldn't have' if they'd 'gotten it'."

"Eh?"

"When things got bad here, one of the kids said to himself, 'this wouldn't be happening if it weren't for the Red Dragon King,' took the gift from him and stomped it into powder."

Zeno took a breath, let it out slowly. That slippery downward pull again, and this time he knew what it was. "I'm sorry," he said. "Two thousand years and I never… I felt like I was just…" It felt ridiculous to be two thousand years old and tongue-tied, but apparently there were things he still didn't understand, even about himself. "I let myself think of them as just green dragons and not ask what each of their lives were like, so…"

 _All this time, I thought everyone else was leaving me alone, but maybe, really, I was the one…_

He felt something more than a nudge but less than a blow as Shuten planted a fist in his fluffy hair. "Two thousand years and you're still a glutton for punishment! It's still annoying, too. 'Oh, it should have been like this,' 'oh, I'm not good enough,' — just say 'to hell with it' and do what you need to do already!"

"So I should be more like you and Guen?" Zeno asked.

"As long as you're not like Abi; I couldn't take two of him. Thank the gods this new one doesn't look a damn thing like him." Shuten sighed and let slip a hint of wistfulness. "The new white one doesn't look a thing like Guen either, does he?"

"In the face, you mean? Nope, not a bit," Zeno said. "And this green dragon doesn't look like you."

"Huh? I thought he did. It's the teeth, isn't it?" Shuten grumbled, then drew a slow breath, if a ghost could do such a thing. "Jae-ha…" He spoke his successor's name slowly, as though savoring it. "Take care of him for me, will you?"

"I try, but he has things to say about it sometimes."

"I'll bet he does!" He paused. "I don't think this place… I don't think I deserve him."

Zeno stretched, rose to his feet, and dusted himself off. He looked down at his old friend, who was still seated — and planted a fist in his slick green hair. "You're right. It is annoying when people do that, isn't it?"

Shuten batted his hand away. "Just get out of here already. — And don't make it two thousand years this time!"

Zeno blinked at him. "You're still planning on being here?"

"What did you think? Even if I get all _these_ kids out the door you never know what stupid crap those villagers are going to do. Hell, even if they cleaned up their act, I'm used to it here. Why leave? I'm the saint of this place, you know." He'd scoffed to Yona's face, but now he accepted the title she'd given him with a swell of pride.

Zeno blinked at him again. That foolish prickling mist again, and this time it tugged his mouth toward a smile. It wasn't the self-indulgent cheer he liked to show people, but he let the smile come, foolishness and all. "Then, until next time."

"You'll know where to find me; I'm not going anywhere."

"Neither am I," Zeno replied. He meant something different by it, but he knew that he and Shuten understood each other.

* * *

Early the next morning, Yoon and Kija finally left Green Dragon Village. By then, the sun had revealed the full extent of the damage, and it was a great deal but nothing unrecoverable. The injuries, likewise, were nothing fatal. Yoon hadn't received much thanks for his help, but he hadn't really looked for it. By the time they left, hearing an end to Kija's lectures was almost thanks enough, even for him.

He waited until they were well away from the village before tempting fate again. "You seemed to take this whole thing really personally," he said.

"I just couldn't believe it!" Even now, Kija was still fuming. "Blue Dragon Village was terrible, but this place! To see dragon blood treated like — like nothing! Like a mere nuisance! To think of dragon warriors being raised in a place like this with no — with no sense of the sacred!"

"I guess it does explain some things," Yoon said. The remark had begun as a joke at Jae-ha's expense, but it was cold before it even reached his mouth.

Kija took it in without reply and without offense. If anything it seemed to calm him, or at least weigh him down. They walked on for some time in silence. Gradually, Kija slackened his pace and began gazing absently at his cloth-wrapped claw.

Yoon looked at him and drifted closer beside him by way of query.

Kija glanced back and took the cue but continued for several more steps before he spoke. "Once," he said, "when I was eleven or twelve years old, I broke a support beam of a house. I don't even remember any reason why I did it."

 _Eleven or twelve… That age, huh?_ Yoon thought it was explanation enough.

"Everyone was able to prop it up in time and make repairs, but it was a panic," Kija continued. "Granny took me aside and talked to me for a long time about how doing such a thing was hurtful to the people around me, how it was unworthy of me and of my power. But nothing she said made me doubt for a moment that I was more important than the house."

He fell silent for a few steps. "Even with the tradition of my village saying that the white dragon's power was sacred, I'm sure it would have been easy to see me as troublesome and dangerous if I misbehaved. I could have been feared or restrained, but instead I was taught with care, and I was trusted.

"Shin-ah and Jae-ha deserved to be treated as well as I was, so of course something like this makes me angry, but it's nothing disrespectful like pity. How could I pity someone who faced difficulties I never did, without the help that I had, and still grew to be just as strong as I am?"

 _Stronger, if bugs are involved_ , Yoon noted silently.

"For a while, I let myself wonder if I would have done as well in their place, but there's no use in thinking that way. The best thing I can do is to give them my respect and be grateful for the love I received."

When Kija turned to look at him, Yoon averted his eyes, feeling the annoying heat of a blush across his face.

"Am I wrong?" Kija asked.

"No, you're not, just… Geez, back in your village they let you say anything you wanted to, didn't they?"

* * *

Soo-won yawned. It got him a sharply-raised eyebrow from General Joo-doh, and admittedly letting it slip in the middle of a Five Tribes meeting wasn't the best of manners. He did like to keep everyone's awe of him in a certain balance, though, and letting a bit of human weakness show was in keeping. The important thing was that he was paying careful attention, and he could demonstrate that to anyone's satisfaction whenever he chose.

He did take another sip of tea. It was early in the morning and several people were still waking up, but Soo-won in particular had slept badly, and the effects were inconvenient.

The new governor of Awa was in the midst of his report and continued unfazed. "The importation of drugs from Kai remains a problem, especially at makeshift landings outside the port itself," he was saying. "Coastal patrols outside the immediate area of the city are beyond my jurisdiction; I can only offer my opinion that they would be a justified use of resources. Addiction and trafficking in the city itself are lower than in comparable areas, and the citizens have been very cooperative. Your Majesty's suggestion of enlisting assistance from the ladies in hospitality professions has been especially fruitf—"

"Uwah!" General Tae-woo of the Wind Tribe suddenly jumped. "Sorry, sorry, it just took me a minute to catch — er — did he just say what I think he said?"

Tae-woo was hemmed in by glares, on the one side from old Mundok and on the other side from General Joon-gi, who could glare surprisingly well with his eyes closed. General Geun-tae, on the other hand, only smiled.

For his part, Soo-won outright beamed. "He was so diplomatic, wasn't he? He's always like that! No matter who he's talking to or who it's about, he's just so polite it's impossible to be angry at him."

His choice for the appointment had been unconventional. The new governor had previously been a bureaucrat below the rank that would normally be considered for such a post, but Soo-won had known what kind of man he wanted and had known where to find just such a man. For a town that threw off its last governor, it had to be someone who would keep things from getting chaotic, but he didn't want to undercut the strength the citizens had built in standing up for themselves, and sending someone who might provoke them would be courting disaster. Thus, the by-the-book bureaucrat without a discourteous bone in his body. Promoting him out of turn could have caused disruptive controversy, but when the predecessor had been murdered in an uprising and the post came with no more than the usual complement of troops or bodyguards, no one made much fuss at being passed over.

"Please continue," Soo-won prompted.

The governor bowed in acknowledgment. "The topic had been adequately addressed.

"Moving on, I have been trying to ascertain the particulars in the matter of my predecessor's death. Of course, per Your Majesty's order, no legal action is to be taken, but I thought it worthwhile for the sake of a complete record. At first, word of Your Majesty's clemency was met with some confusion —" he didn't say "distrust" or any word that might imply disloyalty "— and we were unable to gain much in the way of information, but by this time the citizens have grown more confident, and the incident is now the subject of a popular song. It exists in a handful of variants, of which we've transcribed as many as possible, and you may find them included in my written report."

Geun-tae leaned over to Soo-won. "Dullest murder case I ever heard, even with a song to spice it up. This guy's a secret weapon — if they start another uprising, he'll put them all to sleep." He sounded at once amused and impressed at the shrewdness of it.

Soo-won nodded happily, sipping his tea.

"…All versions do agree on the identity of the immediate perpetrator. According to the song, my predecessor was shot by one of the women he intended to sell."

"That could be excused as self-defense even without the blanket pardon," Joon-gi observed.

"Indeed so, if the account is true. It may be only a story that has gained wide acceptance as an expression of the citizens' sense of grievance and justification. The description of the woman is again very consistent, but I would consider it as an instance of poetic license. The song states that 'her eyes burned with the fire of justice, and her hair blazed red like the coming dawn.'"

Soo-won's teacup hit the floor and shattered with a jaggedly musical ring.

"Your Majesty, my profoundest apologies if I given offense." The governor bowed deeply to him.

He was staring slack-jawed and had to shake himself out of it. "Oh, no! Not at all! It's just that I had a dream last night — a girl just like that told she had been the one…"

A flurry of muttering broke out around the room. Soo-won scolded himself for carelessly setting it off — and it was all the worse because, if he mentioned a red-haired girl, the better half of the room knew exactly who she was. Tae-woo and Mundok stared with fiercely-guarded wonder not directed at the king. Geun-tae's brows went up, at once knowing and questioning. Joon-gi betrayed no reaction, but surely something was going through his mind. Kyo-ga at least was off at his studies and missed the slip-up, but word was sure to reach him.

Joo-doh bent down to Soo-won's ear so that his whisper was loud and harsh: "If you knew that already, tell me! Don't make bad jokes!"

Even among the minor ministers who didn't know, it was a problem. "Does the king hear the voice of the gods in his dreams?" one of them was asking.

"Ah, it was just a coincidence, I'm sure!" Soo-won said, trying to wave it off and answer everyone at once. "A little before that, I dreamed that some fruit jellies came to life and Minister Kei-shuk was chasing them around." He laughed.

It didn't catch, and very soon, through a mix of confusion, facetiousness, and social momentum, Kei-shuk had the eyes of all the room on him.

He folded his hands and inclined his head, his decorum liberally seasoned with vinegar. "I assure you all, gentlemen, that nothing of that kind has occurred."

* * *

When Yona woke, dawn had passed. The sun had taken on the white color of full day, but its light still came slanting over the hills and through the trees, and the misty scent of morning had not quite burned away. There were other smells too: wood smoke, savory rice, and there was the bubbling sound of cooking.

She opened her eyes and sat up. Yoon and Kija hadn't returned, but everyone else was there. It was Zeno stirring the cookpot.

Hak was still watching over her. "Princess."

"I'm all right," she announced preemptively. Wanting to prove it, she got to her feet and found herself still a little unsteady. It would take more time to get back to normal after that ordeal, but she wasn't helpless.

Jae-ha still lay in his bedroll, with Shin-ah still watching beside him. Yona went over to them; at first she felt a pang of worry — Jae-ha's hand was wrapped with a bloodstained bandage, and the sunlight revealed bruises she hadn't been able to see during the night — but as she watched, it seemed that he was sleeping peacefully. His hair fell lightly across his face, his mouth lay slack, and his eyes were closed and settled into gently-sloping curves.

"I never noticed how cute he looks when he's sleeping," Yona whispered. "It just makes you want to cuddle him, doesn't it?"

Shin-ah nodded with a hint of restrained eagerness. Ao on the other hand knew nothing of restraint and lay curled in the hollow of his shoulder.

Hak gave them a look of silent disbelief.

Jae-ha's face pinched, and he stirred. "Nnngh… Hey… When you say something like that about a grown man, he might take it the wrong way." He tried to sit up, but he winced when he moved anything but his right leg, and he couldn't brace his right hand. Rather than leave him to solve the balance puzzle himself, Shin-ah lent an arm to lift him.

"Are you all right? How do you feel?" Yona asked.

"I'll manage," he said, but then his mouth bent into a frown, and he turned away from her before opening his eyes. "But Yona dear… This is really terribly embarrassing…"

"Why?" she asked innocently, trying to dodge into his line of sight. "You saved the day back there! It was so amazing how you just — walked — like that. Er, saying it that way it doesn't sound so great, but when you did it, it totally was! Some of the ghosts were able to rest in peace just from watching you!"

He stared at her, blinking. "Yes, I was impressive, wasn't I?" he finally agreed, with a bit of undue emphasis as the only remaining clue that he hadn't thought so all along.

"Of course, from what I hear," Hak pointed out, "you trying to play it cool was what got us into the whole mess."

Jae-ha winced again.

"Zeno said too much," the yellow dragon muttered.

The grassy sound of footsteps came in from the trees, announcing Yoon and Kija's return.

Yoon stretched himself. "Ahhh, the delicious smell of food I didn't have to cook!"

Zeno stirred the bubbling pot. "Everyone had such a hard day, Zeno made rice porridge. It's nice and salty and there were some wild onions. It's hard to carry, though, so we have to eat it all."

Jae-ha waved a _welcome back_ , still sitting in his bedroll. It was his right hand that he waved to them, and he noticed the bandage and stopped to admire it. "Ah, Kija, we dressed alike today."

Kija immediately clapped a hand to Jae-ha's forehead, checking for fever. "Are you all right? How do you feel?"

"I'll manage."

"How is everyone back in the village?" Yona asked.

"Lots of bruises, lots of broken _stuff_ ," Yoon answered, "a few broken bones. Nobody's going to die."

Yona saw Jae-ha relax at that news. Maybe she should keep quiet, but the resonance was too fresh. "That's good to hear, isn't it? Even after what they did, you want them to be okay."

Jae-ha did take an awkward moment to reply to that. "Well, it's good not to leave with any regrets like that. Especially since Kija made certain I can never go back again."

"I don't see why not!" Kija insisted.

"We haven't even told you what the _princess_ said about you in front of the whole place," Hak remarked.

"Oh, dear, I'm blushing already."

Yoon pushed their banter aside. "What about your 'one person' who only they could bring you back? Can they not even do it now?" he asked.

"Oh, that's right, isn't it? I broke my solemn vow in front of everyone," Jae-ha said with a genuine frown.

"Zeno says being possessed doesn't count!"

"You never said who it was," Yoon persisted.

"You're right. I didn't."

Yona looked at him, but no answer was forthcoming. Apparently he wanted to keep it to himself.

Their cook started ladling out porridge. "Zeno has a guess, but he won't say."

Shin-ah also had a guess, and he didn't hold it back. "The next one," he said. "The next green dragon."

Jae-ha wilted in mock-violation. "I have no secrets," he lamented. "Yes, that was the vow. I would never return until I felt that my successor had been born, and then I would be honor-bound to attempt a kidnapping — risking death and worse than death, but —"

"— _But_ , Green Dragon," Zeno interrupted, handing him the first bowl of porridge, "you wouldn't go _without us_ , would you?"

Jae-ha found himself surrounded by tokens of fierce assent — Shin-ah nodded, Kija clenched his claw, Hak grinned as if spoiling for a fight, and Yona had that spark of fire in her eyes. He sat staring for a moment as the mental image, well-worn and deeply traced into his sense of himself, was revealed as preposterously out of date.

Finally he laughed. "Now that you mention it, that wouldn't be my first choice, no."

"Yes! No more dragons getting chained up!" Zeno declared.

Jae-ha paused over his food, and Yona saw a faraway look come over his eyes. "The ones made of metal aren't the worst kind," he said.

Yona cocked her head.

He considered it for a moment. "The ones made of stupidity are worse. I left that place knowing nothing at all — about money… drugs… love…"

"Something tells me you managed to learn it all the hard way," Hak said.

"When you get to know the captain, you find that she's a very patient woman," Jae-ha replied, in a roundabout confirmation.

"You're going to go back there sometime, aren't you? To Awa," Yona guessed.

"I will. I don't know when, or how long I'll stay, but I will."

"So, not all chains are bad," Hak pointed out.

"You would be the one to know," Jae-ha replied, taking a sip of porridge.

Hak replied not with words but with a keen smile.

Yona blushed, not quite knowing why, but she smiled too, in her own way. She wasn't used to Jae-ha opening up like that, and she remembered the day this whole thing had started, his deadpan voice saying, _I feel so loved_. Those words were probably too plain and clumsy for him to ever say without turning them into a joke, but Yona thought that if Jae-ha meant to say that seriously, this was what it would sound like.

* * *

They set an easy pace that day. Despite Jae-ha's hopes for wine and beautiful women, by evening they hadn't seen a town or gotten beyond the slopes and hollows of that country, so they pitched their tent and camped on a hillside.

Yona offered to take the first watch, reasoning that she was the most rested of all of them, but the others — especially Shin-ah and Jae-ha — insisted she go easy on herself after the ordeal with the ghosts. The after-effects of that were the problem, though. Her body wasn't so tired, but her mind was too unsettled to sleep, and after an hour or two of lying awake, she finally crept out of the tent.

Outside, the clouds of the night before had cleared, making way for starlight and a sliver of moon. It was enough to see her way around.

The dragons in their bedrolls had gathered themselves into such a snug pile that Yona had to look carefully to find Jae-ha at the bottom, and it made her smile. Seeing it directed at him, she knew it was only natural that everyone would be protective for a while. Yoon hadn't even complained about washing Jae-ha's blood out of her dress.

She looked around and spotted Hak sitting further up the slope. They waved to each other, and he didn't try to send her back to bed. He didn't so much as frown as she climbed up and sat down a couple of feet from him.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

"No."

"You could practice your archery," he suggested. "After all, we have that new bow and the arrows you stole."

He was trying to tease her, but she wasn't a bit sorry, and she certainly wasn't giving those back.

"I'll do that later," she said. Right now she would be too distracted, and she needed to go further into the distraction.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Yona finally reached into her robe and took out the box that held the hairpin. It was hard — with Hak there, it was even harder than she had expected, and she felt heat come up in her face, but in the past day and night she had faced much harder things.

She opened the box and looked at the ornament. She ran her fingers over the smooth enamel of the created flower petals and butterfly wings. She touched the colder metal edges of the leaves and ran the dangling chains and beads through her fingers. The darkness turned the delicate, vibrant colors to dark, mysterious blues, and it struck her what a rarity it was: a flower fully open in the night.

Yona heard Hak draw a breath. She was intensely aware of him watching her.

"I'm going to keep it," she said.

Silence for a moment. "Is that so?" he answered dully.

"I mean, the way things are now there's really nothing to do about it. It's just, for myself, I need to be honest that I want to keep it," she hastened to explain. It all came out vague and confused; she was working around barriers she didn't understand, toward a goal she didn't understand either, but there was something she needed to make clear. "It's like, if I admit it, then I don't have to fight it so much, I'm not stuck fighting it, so it might be more where I could think about other…" _Things_ was the wrong word, so she just let it drop, but as it began to make sense, she gave an awkward chuckle. "That's not how it's supposed to work, is it? If you say you… have feelings… in one place, that's not supposed to be what makes it so you can have feelings in other places. Right? Maybe I'm just weird."

"No," Hak told her. "I think I get it, just…"

"Just what?" She looked at him.

"Just, coming from you it sounds…" Suddenly he grinned, and his teeth showed pale in the dark. "It sounds surprisingly adult."

"What does that mean? When you talk about things like that and say 'adult,' you make it sound a little dirty."

"Oh, excuse me! You're the one who just said 'hey, I can love as many people at once as I want'!"

Sudden, harsh heat flooded into her face. Before she could reply beyond wordless sputtering, he leaned in closer.

"Were you planning on adding me to your little harem, Princess?"

"No!" she burst out. "Er! I mean —! _Hak, you're so mean!_ " she finally cried.

He started laughing.

"It's not fair!" she persisted. "If I say 'no' it sounds like — it sounds bad — but then if I say 'yes' it sounds like I want to —"

Yona stopped short, and then she started laughing, too.

"What? What's so funny?" Hak asked.

"I just— I just imagined it like they do it in Kai," she laughed, "and I pictured you in the inner palace all dressed up in fancy clothes!"

"Oh, so you _are_ into that?" he prodded. "You think I wouldn't make it look good?" With each sally he pressed her to laugh harder.

Below them, Yoon crawled blearily out of the tent, roused by the noise. "Oh, it's those two. What are they on about anyway?"

"I… don't… know…" Shin-ah replied.

"I— I don't— don't think I know either," Kija stammered.

Jae-ha would have stroked his chin, but the others had him pinned down too completely to move his arms. "So we're a harem now," he mused. "Interesting…"

"Ahh," Zeno sighed, "the Miss is growing up so fast!" He leaned back against the younger dragons and gazed up into the sky, basking in the warmth and laughter and starlight.

 **Not All Chains are Forged of Iron - END**


End file.
